


The Melancholy of Haruhi Insano

by mosu_mosu



Category: Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu | The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, That Guy with the Glasses/Channel Awesome
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosu_mosu/pseuds/mosu_mosu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ordinary schoolgirl once had mysterious godlike powers bestowed on her -- but what happens when an extraordinary schoolgirl receives them?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For TGWTG Big Bang 2014.

A teenage girl laid in bed in her room as the sunlight filtered in through the window. She rustled slightly, then kicked up her blankets, leaving a mess of her bed as she stumbled out. She stood up and stretched out wide, her knuckles cracking quietly. She rubbed her eyes, flipped her hair back, and picked her school uniform up by the hanger off the hook on her door. She pulled the door open and padded across the hall into the bathroom.

She pulled off her rumpled, chemical-stained scrub shirt, worn carelessly during her sleep, and flung it into a nearly-full laundry basket by the sink. She promptly pulled off her jeans, threw them into the basket, and pulled on her uniform skirt before taking her uniform shirt and putting it on. She struggled with it, for the hem got stuck over her breasts, and her arms flailed limply as she tried to reach for it.

“Haruhi!” a young woman chimed from outside the door.

“Koharu,” Haruhi mumbled from inside her cotton prison.

Koharu opened the door to the bathroom, not noticing her barely-clothed sister. She picked up the laundry basket and started to leave when she spotted Haruhi’s wriggling. She looked back, her eyes wide.

“Haruhi,” Koharu giggled, dropping the basket in her laughter. “You’re stuck!” She hurried to her sister and grasped the hem of her shirt, pulling it down firmly. Haruhi’s head poked out of the collar, her long black hair a mess. They looked together at Haruhi’s reflection in the mirror as she tied the ribbon of her uniform shirt in a neat bow.

“You’ve got such big dark circles under your eyes,” Koharu mumbled. “You should get some beauty rest sometime.”

“Beauty rest doesn’t give me time to experiment. I’m a busy person,” Haruhi replied, picking up a brush. “And a real scientist shouldn’t have to worry about their looks beyond comfort,” she said, brushing her hair out.

“Come on, it’s your first day of high school. You should make yourself look a little presentable, sis,” Koharu whimpered. “You know, so people like you.”

“I don’t want people to like me,” Haruhi said, smirking. She set the brush on the bathroom counter and put on a big, thick pair of glasses. “I’m going to be the same person I ever was.”

“That’s my Haruhi,” Koharu said, folding her arms. Haruhi pulled her hair into a long ponytail, then pulled a red ribbon around it, wrapping it around her hair tie several times. She leaned back, dangling her hair in front of her sister. Koharu took the long ribbon tails in her hands and tied them into a bow.

“Where’s my coat?” Haruhi asked, parting her bangs in the middle.

“I snuck into your room to get it last night,” Koharu said, stepping out of the bathroom for a second and returning with a clean white labcoat. “I knew you’d want it today, so I washed it for you.”

“Thank you,” Haruhi said, pulling on the labcoat, tucking the lapels under her collar and bow, and buttoning it as far up as she could manage.

“Rather convenient that they allow that sort of thing, huh?” Koharu asked, raising an eyebrow. “I heard North High started allowing any kind of unlined jacket or shirt as a covering just this year. Before, you had to wear the uniform cardigan to keep warm.”

“Lucky me, then,” Haruhi chimed. “I’d feel naked without this thing.” She straightened out the coat, and her skirt barely peeked out from under it. The lapels laid neatly on her chest, and on her left breast, the words “Dr. Insano” were embroidered perfectly in solid black.

“Breakfast is ready when you want it, Doctor,” Koharu said in a light voice, picking up the laundry basket again and smirking as she left.

Haruhi left the bathroom, walked into the kitchen, and picked up a plate of toast and eggs. She took a fork from a drying rack by the sink and started to dig into her plate, leaning on the counter by a can of soda.

“How long do I have to get to school?” Haruhi shouted with a mouth full of eggs.

“Half an hour,” Koharu replied, walking to the kitchen in a hurry. “You should speed up. Get some socks on.”

“I’m eating here!”

“Yeah, and? Eat your breakfast while you get to school, like a girl in a cheesy drama or an anime show.”

“Cheesy dramas aren’t my type and you know it.”

“Didn’t rule out the anime, though -- that’s so you. Come on, you’re begging for something interesting to happen to you when you’re the most interesting person I know.”

“You must not know very many people,” Haruhi said, popping open her soda and drinking it. “You hardly get out for anything that doesn’t involve work or your work friends.”

“Oh, yeah, everybody’s so boring at the industrial laboratory,” Koharu said sarcastically. Haruhi lifted her finger and shook the can in agreement, and Koharu slumped in defeat. “Okay, yeah, sure. I don’t exactly know the most exciting people, but you can find some, right? And they can be my friends, too, so I can be cool with the kids and not just some ordinary Christmas cake.”

“You’re a 25-year old woman with several degrees in biochemistry, sis, I hardly think you’re going to lose relevance any time soon,” Haruhi said, polishing off the can and throwing it idly into the trash. She stuffed the rest of her toast into her mouth and walked over to her school bag, socks and shoes, and began to put them on.

“Well…you know...” Koharu said, looking aside for a bit and slouching. She sprung up and splayed her arms and hands. “It’s your first day of high school, okay?! It’s an adventure, right? Right?! Go do something fun! Go meet some friends and join a club or something! Go! Go to school! And don’t be late!”

“Call me if you need me at work,” Haruhi said calmly, standing up in her long black socks and brown leather loafers with her school bag in hand.

“I’m not gonna -- okay, Haruhi,” Koharu replied, throwing up her hands and slumping over as Haruhi left the house.

Haruhi walked down the path out to the sidewalk beside her house. She turned to the direction of the train station, continuing down the road.

Just as she’d almost arrived at the train stop, a young man in the North HIgh uniform turned onto her path and stood still as the train passed. Haruhi stood next to him, and when he wasn’t looking, she scanned him over.

“You look...different,” she said, putting her arms behind her back as she caught the man’s attention and started walking beside him up the steep hill. “Your hair is...wavy, for a guy.”

“Um,” he said, running a hand through his black hair and turning to Haruhi. “You too? For a girl?”

“Yeah. And you’ve got nice eyes, too. All...green and stuff. I haven’t seen them very often.”

“...Kay,” the man said, before scratching his chin nervously. “Uh, call me Spoony.”

“Hey, you ever think about the supernatural?” Haruhi asked, shifting back and forth on her feet. “Do you believe in that kind of thing?”

“Not since I was a little kid,” he said. ”Santa, espers, magic, aliens, sliders...it’s all the same for me. Just dreams that’ll never come true.”

“Maybe not, though,” she said softly. “Maybe there really are espers, and aliens and sliders and all that good stuff out there. That’s what I hope.”

Spoony turned away, smiling, as they arrived at North High. They turned in to the courtyard of the school, spreading apart as they carried on through the crowd. Eventually, they lost sight and mind of each other as they went to the entrance ceremony.

From the four junior high schools in the area, a large congregation of first-years had formed. In crisp navy sport jackets and light-blue-collared school uniforms with various colors of shirts and cardigans below them, they had gathered to witness the entrance ceremony.

The principal stepped up to the podium and began to drone, instantly making Spoony’s mind wander from boredom. His eyes drifted around the room, over the various faces and backs of heads in the crowd. He recognized some from his old school, some he’d seen from other schools, and a majority of people he didn’t recognize at all. He turned his head from side to side, until he caught his eye on Haruhi, sitting several seats to his left in the same row as him.

Her eyes were wide, as if she were expecting a grand journey to unfold before her. She was hunched slightly, leaning towards the principal, seemingly hanging on his every word. She blinked, the lights twinkling off the thick lenses of her glasses.

As the principal explained various elements of the school’s history, Haruhi’s mind was really roaming. Several different ideas strung along in her mind, collecting various parts and explanations as they went. She turned to the people next to her, attracting their attention. She called them, her eyes widening at the two boys beside her. They stared at her awkwardly, and she rattled off some spiel as if it were the most exciting thing she had ever thought of.

But instead of being as excited as she was, the two nodded and turned away nervously, chatting at each other timidly and dismissing her. Haruhi turned back and receded into her own mind, looking down at her own hands in her lap.

Spoony's mind defocused from Haruhi, and he started thinking of the way she'd complimented him, gushing over his eyes and hair like they were simply rarities to be admired. No question seemed to come from her as to where he'd gotten his features; she only felt the excitement of seeing someone who looked different. It was a pleasant change of pace to hear a compliment for once, he thought.

The entrance ceremony ended soon after, and not soon enough for Spoony.

Soon enough, the first-year and the rest of the student body had made their way to class. Spoony found himself in the fifth first-year class, and ignored the rest of the people around him as he looked down at his new desk.

The homeroom teacher was a middle-aged woman, Saguri-sensei, who proudly proclaimed her status as a PE teacher and the sponsoring teacher for the handball team. She lisped through her self-introduction, chattering on about how she was a star handball player at college in Tokyo, and how her team won championships every year she was on the team.

"I got my start in high school, and I've got trophies coming out of my butt! Not enough kids are on the handball team, so if you want to be as famous and successful as me, start now and you'll be a regular in no time!"

Spoony cupped his mouth in his hands as he grinned. The sheer vivaciousness the old lady had for something as utterly mundane as competitive handball was amusing beyond recognition.

"Happy happy handball! Now everybody introduce themselves!" she chimed, throwing her arms into the air.

Starting from the left, each of Spoony's classmates introduced themselves. They shared trivial things, like their names, the name of their old school, their favorite foods, and such. Spoony hastily formed an introduction, hustling through it to get it done. He sat down, laying his hands on the desk and slouching in relief.

Then the person behind him stood up. The loud stomp of a firm foot landing on the ground echoed throughout the room as all but Spoony turned to see.

"My name is Suzumiya Haruhi, from East Junior High. I am a simple mad scientist, who strives for little more than complete domination of the insufferable peons who pollute this earth."

Spoony snapped around as Haruhi spoke nasal, crisp, and loud, like she was 5 steps away from conquering the world. It was unusual to him to hear her speak that way, but it oddly suited her.

"Obviously, I'm not interested in ordinary people. But if any of you are time-travelers, aliens, espers, or any other kind of supernatural being, please see me. That is all."

She promptly sat down, crossing her legs and looking intently at Spoony as he fixed his gaze on her.

"Are you trying to be funny?" he whispered, and she flipped a lock of hair out of her face, raising her eyebrows. Her eyes glowed with determination, her throat was white and gleaming, and her small lips twisted into an almost evil grin.

"Nope," she said, and her lips pursed with pride. In retrospect, the question was rather useless. For what it's worth, Haruhi took everything seriously.

The fairies of silence danced around the classroom for thirty seconds or so as the students silently contemplated the strange events that had just unfolded. Soon enough, though, the teacher signalled the person behind Haruhi to introduce themselves.

After that day, Haruhi turned from a proud, projecting mad scientist to a rather bright but quiet and innocent-looking ordinary girl. The air in class went somewhat still whenever she said something, and she was rarely approached by anyone, not even Spoony. Even on the way to school Haruhi would lag behind him, reading a book or flipping through her phone just out of his view.

While not yelling about mad science or demanding to see supernatural beings, Haruhi looked like any other cute girl. With her centimeter-thick rims framing her eyes, the deep circles under them became less stark, and maybe even endearing, like a precious shy bookworm who just reads too much at night. She was close enough to a normal girl that one morning, Spoony deliberately sat in front of her in homeroom.

"Hey, hey," he said, turning around with an airy smile. "That stuff you were talking about in your intro...were you really serious?"

"What stuff in my intro?" she asked, her eyebrows furrowing.

"The stuff about the aliens and time travelers and all," Spoony answered.

"Well, are you an alien? Or a time traveler?" She looked utterly serious.

"Uh...no...?"

"If you're not, then what do you want?"

"Um, nothing."

"Then don't bother me about it. Make yourself useful and sit there, looking pretty."

Spoony's face twisted in surprise as he turned back around, barely being able to mutter out an apology. Some of their classmates looked at him, amused, and a small giggle came from the corner. Others looked to him with sympathy, as if they'd already known about her strange tone and behavior. Embarrassed, he shook his head and buried it in his hands.

Spoony, having learned from his mistakes, avoided Haruhi for the next couple of weeks, as did the rest of the class. However, one constant remained. Some of the girls, accepting as they were, would try to include her in their regular conversations.

"Hey, Haruhi," one would say, turning towards Haruhi's seat. "Did you catch the show last night?"

"What show?" she'd reply.

"The one at nine o'clock."

"No, I didn't, I was watching Godzilla vs Biollante," or some other movie that Haruhi would watch. Her taste was as eccentric as her inner personality. One night she'd watch some obscure period drama, the next she'd marathon old American B-movies, or some schlocky cheesecake anime.

"Ah, well, that's alright, then. But the show's pretty interesting, you should watch it sometime. I can give you the whole story up until now if you want, I know everything about --"

"I don't even know what you're talking about..." Haruhi would say, invariably cutting the girl off. Then Haruhi would shake her head or frown, then walk away to finish her work.

Haruhi's work was rather mysterious, even to Spoony. She'd constantly be scribbling away in her notebook, flipping between the pages constantly and filling them up. After about a week, the notebooks would pile up, and she'd come to class with an ever-growing stack. A fast glimpse into it, as that short a look would be all that you could get, revealed scrawled equations and flowcharts, barely legible to the average eye. Their true purpose was just as unclear as what they even were -- maybe they were plans for a giant death ray, or mere exercises out of a textbook.

Either way, Spoony's interest became piqued again.

At lunch one day, Spoony sat down alone and started to open his lunchbox before a gentle hand clasped his shoulder. He snapped around, his eyes darting up to a pleasant lady’s face. Her brown puppy-like eyes looked down at him, and he could feel her gaze tickling some strange part of his mind.

“Yeah?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Miss Kimidori?”

“I hate to see someone eating alone,” she said. “Come along, have lunch with us. You can just call me Saki if you’d like, I don’t mind friendliness.”

“Sure,” Spoony replied, packing up his things and carrying them in his arms.

They sat down in one of the second-year classrooms, in front of Saki’s friends, one a chubby brown-haired girl with a khaki cardigan over her uniform, and the other dressed in the men’s uniform, but with the girl’s uniform ribbon tied around his neck.

“You know, I don’t get that Kurosawa,” the girl said, pensively reading her history textbook before looking up. “Oh! Saki. Nice of you to come over here.”

“Hello, Kairi, Hazuki-sensei,” Saki said, as Spoony nodded to each of them.

“I wonder how long it’s going to be before you actually become a teacher and that name becomes appropriate,” Kairi mumbled, turning to her friend.

“Yeah, no, I’m not gonna be a teacher. Ever. Not a chance,” Hazuki said, picking at his lunch. “But it’s not like I mind being called by my last name. It’s way more comfortable for me.”

“I know that for sure,” Kairi said, closing her eyes and smiling gently before turning to the others. “We were gonna start talking about the guys who’re having problems with the Classical Music and Opera Club.”

“Yeah?” Spoony said, looking at Kairi questioningly.

“I heard the only member in it is cold as ice!” Kairi whispered. Her eyes widened as she leaned in. “Her name’s Kurosawa Yuki, and when they showed up to join, she gave them a bunch of really random American movies to write a big essay about for entry! I don’t know what’s with her.”

“It’s a bit surprising to see someone do that without even knowing who they are or what they’ve done,” Hazuki said, sipping a can of tea. “I’d have done it too, if I knew how to code. Nobody needs to be up in my business without knowing what the hell they’re doing. That Kurosawa oughta show some stuff to that one girl who had problems with people barging into the International Movie Club to request movies like a fuckin’ video rental store last year.”

“Do tell,” Kairi said, closing her book.

“She’s in her third year of junior high now,” Hazuki began. “Big movie buff, kind of quiet otherwise. People picked on her a lot for maybe being a delinquent -- she’s a natural blonde and she’s got a funny country accent. Real odd egg, makes people call her Coco, but she’s quite nice otherwise.”

“Hey,” Spoony said, swallowing a chunk of food. “Do you know anything about Suzumiya Haruhi?”

Hazuki stiffened, and Kairi’s face twisted. A silence passed over the full group.

"Haruhi...Haruhi's been a classmate of ours for the past few years," Kairi calmly began.

"She's completely unhinged. I don't even know how she managed to get past that vandalization incident she pulled three years ago," Hazuki spat, his voice growing sour.

"You know those rolling field markers with plaster dust, right? She took one of those and drew some huge strange symbol in the middle of the field at East Junior High," Kairi continued, gesturing with her hands. "When I came to school, all I could see were big triangles and circles in the fields. Then I saw the bird's-eye view in the newspaper, and it looked really strange, like it had some broken Nazca pictogram on it!"

"The headline was 'Mystery Vandal Strikes Junior High At Night'," Hazuki said, smirking through his bitterness. "Not such a goddamn mystery, is it really? She came out and said she did it to the administration, but she refused to say why. She just stared them into not punishing her without taking responsibility for what she did."

"Did you guys ever find out why she did it?" Spoony said, looking back and forth between them.

"Not really," Kairi said. "Most people assumed she was trying to call down a UFO, or make lightning strike her messed up mad scientist creation or summon an interdimensional portal. But as long as she keeps quiet we'll never find out for sure."

In the dark of night, she'd rolled a little field marker around, her serious face lit up only by the dim yellow lights of the field. Maybe she'd have gone through all the effort on her own to get all the proper materials together. With that kind of effort, maybe she really was trying to summon a monster or attract aliens, or whatever else she wanted to do.

"But that's not the only thing she did," Hazuki said, putting his empty can aside. "She'd move out all the desks in our classroom to the hall, or get green slime all over the women's bathroom."

"How'd she get all those desks out so fast anyway?" Kairi said, raising her eyebrows. Hazuki shrugged and shook his head.

"Somehow, despite all this, she's really popular with the guys," Hazuki said. Spoony choked on his drink for a moment, and bugged his eyes out in surprise.

"To be honest, she is pretty attractive," Saki said. "She's pretty cute and smart. Athletic, too. If you ignore her weird features, she's not that bad."

"Yeah, to an idiot she wouldn't be that bad," Hazuki groaned, running his hand through his hair. "She's a dick. I don't even know why you bother with her, Spoony."

"Well, I wouldn't say it like that," Kairi said lightly, thoughtfully tenting her fingers. "She did attract just about every guy in the school. She was switching beaus nonstop, almost. From what I heard, the longest relationship she had was a week, and the shortest was about 5 minutes!"

"Is that why you're so bitter...?" Spoony said, looking up to Hazuki, who slammed his hands on the table, clutched his head, and left. Kairi and Saki watched him storm off as Spoony feebly held his hand up to ease the situation.

"Uh...uh, you know, let's talk about something else," Kairi said, gently patting her history book. "Haruhi's been changing clubs every single day, though. Like, one day she's making a pillow in the Sewing Club, the next she's hanging out with Saguri-sensei playing handball with the team, and then the day after that she'll be drawing really nicely in the Calligraphy Club. So on and so forth, you know?"

"I guess constantly switching things is a strategy she really enjoys?"

"Well, you would think so," Saki chimed sweetly. "Anyway, lunch is going to end in about ten minutes. You should head back down to class before you get caught by the bell."

"Okay, then. Nice talking to you guys. I'll see you around," Spoony said, standing up and collecting his things. "Thanks, Saki," he added, before turning around and leaving the room.

Loud rubber stomps echoed down the hall as Haruhi sped past him.

"Hey! Come on, catch me, prettyboy!" she yelled, shuffling down the stairs vigorously.

Spoony's face contorted into a deep frown as he awkwardly hustled his way down the stairs after her.

The next morning, Haruhi brushed her hair lovingly in the mirror. She ran her fingers through it, making sure it was perfectly set, and stood up straight, looking at herself. She picked up two hair ties, pulled her hair into two ponytails, and twisted each one around her hands.

"Trying something different? That's cute," Koharu said, peeking into the bathroom from the hall.

"It's not cute, it's part of my mission," Haruhi replied, turning her nose up at Koharu's assumption. "I'm going to change my hairstyle every day to see if any supernatural beings notice."

"You are?" Koharu said, raising her eyebrows. "Where do you think they are?"

"In my class. Because that's how it works," Haruhi said firmly, smiling slightly. "The weird stuff is always in your class, or at the very least in your school."

"You do expect to be in an anime or something, don't you?" Koharu said, and Haruhi smiled gently at her.

"It'd be nice. But you know, there's this girl in there who's always been really friendly to me and all the other students. She's Irafune Ryoko, president of the Video and Tabletop Gaming Club. She's got pretty black hair and little eyeglasses. She drives the boys mad because she's so nice, and she's practically the class monitor." Haruhi fluffed out her hair as she continued. "Her friends always bug me into trying to talk to them, but she just approaches me the nice way. She likes looking at what I've written in my notebooks, it seems like she understands what they're about."

"Really?" Koharu said, her eyes brightening. "She knows what they're about? Don't you write a bunch of your theories and stuff in there?"

"Yeah, I do. And she gives me commentary on it, like 'If cloning were popular, what’s the meaning of a soul?' or 'If you tried to make your own life form, would that be ethical for you to do?' and stuff. All really interesting questions. It's like she knows as much as I do."

"You should be friends, then," Koharu said, smiling at Haruhi.

"Friendship is my lowest priority. If she's a perfect equal to me, she must be a very different person. I must analyze her now, and if I succeed, maybe I'll consider being her friend."

"You can be a little cruel, can't you, Haruhi?" Koharu sighed, rubbing her chin.

"What if _she's_ cruel? What if that happy exterior's got some conniving thief under it? I've always got to be on guard."

"You really do," Koharu said, and left the bathroom.

So as part of Haruhi's efforts, her hair changed every day. For the first week or so, no one noticed, not even Spoony's curious eyes or Ryoko's prying mind. But the next Wednesday, Spoony did notice.

"You're changing your hair every day in a pattern, aren't you? Are you trying to attract the aliens or something?" he said, turning around to face Haruhi. For a while their seats were shuffled around constantly, but Haruhi was always behind Spoony for some strange reason.

"When did you notice?" she said coolly, looking at Spoony like she was talking to a rock on the side of the road.

"Well, just today. You have your hair in two of those danish-looking buns instead of two ponytails. And last week you just started putting your hair in more and more sections, with the two loopy braids in the bun and the four odango and stuff."

"Did you really?" Haruhi said, resting her chin on her palm boredly.

"Yeah, I guess. You look different to me every day."

"Monday is yellow. Tuesday is red, Wednesday is blue, Thursday is green, Friday is gold. Saturday is brown and Sunday is white."

"For your hair ribbons?" Spoony asked.

"No, for my underwear," Haruhi replied sarcastically, but without losing her serious face and tone.

"Uh, yeah, sure," Spoony said, shaking his head. "So if you used numbers to represent the days, Monday would be zero, and Sunday would be six, right?"

"Yeah," Haruhi said, leaning towards Spoony.

"But wouldn't Monday be one?"

"Who asked for your opinion?" Haruhi said, scowling and turning away.

"Yeah, okay," Spoony said, sinking a little. Haruhi turned back to him, ran her eyes over him, and pushed his head up by his to meet her eyes.

"You remind me of someone...Have I seen you before? Before this year, I mean," she said, her eyes softening.

"No, I don't think so," Spoony said, and Saguri-sensei lightly stepped into class.

The next morning, Haruhi came to class with her hair cut short, just past her chin. Its short length had caused it to be tousled in an almost bed-head-like bob. She wore her yellow ribbons in her hair, and a pair of sparkling swirly goggles on her head. (Apparently it was perfectly fine, to the administration at least, for her to wear something like that to school as an accessory.) Spoony turned around, flustered, as Haruhi sat down.

"Are you kidding me?" Spoony started. "The day after I notice it, you cut all your hair off? Why'd you do that?"

"I felt like it," she said, mildly irritated by Spoony's question. He grumbled to himself for a moment before piping up again.

"Did you really try to join all the clubs in the school?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Is there a club you like better than the others?"

"Nope," Haruhi said flatly. "Absolutely none." She sighed and rested her head in her hands. "I thought this would be more exciting, but everything's the same as it was before. I don't know if I went to the wrong high school or what, but the sports clubs and the cultural clubs are all the same. So monotonous. If only there was something unique here..."

"Who are you to judge what is and what isn't unique?!" Spoony said, his eyebrows furrowing.

"Shut up. It's unique if I like it, and it's boring if I don't. That's how it works."

"That's rude. But I guess you would say something like that."

"Excuse me!" Haruhi snapped, and pushed Spoony back around as Saguri-sensei entered.

The next day, Spoony said to Haruhi:

"This isn't important, but...I heard a rumor about you. Did you really dump all your boyfriends?"

"You're asking questions about stuff you heard again?" Haruhi asked, sneering. She flipped her hair and folded her arms. "Did those two upperclassmen you were with the other day tell you about it?"

"Uh..."

"I don't know exactly what you heard, but it doesn't matter, okay?"

"Isn't there someone you'd want to be in a serious relationship with now?"

"That's stupid, nobody here's good enough for me. They're all idiots, all of them, I don't think I could even bear to be in a casual relationship with them. Every one of them does the same thing! They meet you at the train station, they take you to a movie or a ball game, the first time they take you out to eat is for lunch, and then they have you run off with them for tea. And then they just say 'see you tomorrow' without the slightest bit of sincerity! No consideration for what they know you like, no variety, just the same things, beat by beat! And then they confess that they love you so much over the phone! The phone! How...how phony is that?!"

"You think they know any better?!" Spoony said. "They're all awkward teenagers who only know how to date a girl by what their fathers or the TV told them. You probably make them really nervous too. If I were them I'd probably be piss-scared!"

"Who cares about you, then?!" Haruhi snapped, clenching her fists. She slouched in her chair and sighed deeply. "Are all the boys on Earth this dull? I swear, I've had to deal with this crap since the start of junior high."

"Well, what kind of guy would you consider interesting? An alien?"

"I don't care about what gender they are. Doesn't have to be an alien, either. I'd accept anybody, as long as they're definitely not ordinary people and they actually give a crap about me." She blew a lock of hair out of her face and sat up straight, leaning towards Spoony slightly.

"Why do you always insist on something that's not completely human?"

"Because humans aren't fun at all!"

"Well...maybe you're right," Spoony said quietly. He looked down and contemplated.

Ever since he was a little kid, he'd been wanting to see interesting phenomena like that, right? And if his whole high school life suddenly turned upside down, and his buddy turned out to be a detective from the future, or if there were a cute transfer student who was secretly an alien...maybe things would start looking up for him. But would it be rational for aliens, time travelers, espers, or any other supernatural being to just show up and tell everybody their real identity? Would it even be possible?!

"You're thinking about it, aren't you?" Haruhi whispered, attracting Spoony's attention. "I convinced you, if even for just a second, that I might be right?"

"Huh?" Spoony grunted softly.

"That's it!" she shouted, suddenly standing up and knocking her chair over. The loud clatter of the wood against the floor attracted the rest of the class. "THAT'S WHY I'M TRYING SO HARD!"

"Happy day, kids!" Saguri-sensei called from just outside the door. She entered huffing and puffing, and she looked around the room at her students' fearful expressions before focusing on Haruhi's clenched fists and angry face. "Uh...Homeroom's about to start!" she chimed, and Haruhi promptly sat down and opened her notebook. One by one, the other students turned away from her and looked to the teacher.

"It's okay, Haruhi," Spoony whispered, before being the last to turn around.

"I'm really sorry I was late," Saguri said, twiddling her fingers behind the podium. "Uh...Yeah! Let's begin!"

After class, Spoony wandered out into the hall and started to go back to his locker.

"Spoony! Hey, Spoony!"

He turned around, only to be pinned to the wall by a tall, fit man.

"Taniguchi," Spoony said under his breath. "Taniguchi, what are you doing?"

Taniguchi gurned slightly and looked around into the crowds. His eyes darted back and forth before he finally leaned into Spoony and looked into his eyes suspiciously.

"What magic spell did you cast? I don't care what you try to tell me, you must have done something magical!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Spoony said, his eyebrows turning up.

"This year with you is the first time I've ever seen anyone talk to Suzumiya like that, let alone one of my friends! What the hell miracle did you work?!"

"It's not really a miracle to talk to her, you know."

"Shut u~up. What'd you even talk about to get her that mad?"

"It's none of your business."

"Oh, were you sweet-talking her? Must you always go after the weird girls?"

"Hey!"

"A guy named Spoony isn't normal! Oh nooo!" Taniguchi said mockingly, running his fingers through his blue-brown hair in mocking surprise.

"My name's not fucking Spoony, man! Can't you just call me by my real name?!"

"If your big sister refuses to call you by anything other than that, it's too good a nickname to pass up!"

"Why would Suzumiya talk to you, though?" a cheerful voice chimed. Ryoko walked up to them, tenderly tapping Taniguchi off of Spoony. "I'd like to know too. I try talking to Suzumiya, but I never get to really socialize with her. I manage to talk to her about her research and theories and such, but that's nowhere near as interesting as what you guys seem to say to each other."

"I don't know what I did. But at least you can tell her about all that science stuff. Maybe you have more in common with her than I do."

"I'm relieved you've really become her friend, though. Keep at it! We're all counting on you to get her out of her shell. But in the meanwhile, if we need to tell her something, can we tell you to relay it to her?"

"Uh...okay?"

"Thank you, Spoony!" she said, and walked away cheerfully. They both looked at her as she left, and Taniguchi turned back to Spoony when she had left completely.

"We're still friends, right?" Taniguchi mumbled, and Spoony grinned, gave him a hearty slap on the back, slipped beneath his arms, and skittered away down the stairs.

"By Einstein’s dick!" Haruhi moaned as she sat down the next morning. "Why hasn't anything interesting happened yet?! Where's the little grade-schoolers disappearing one by one mysteriously, or some teachers getting murdered in a locked classroom?!"

"What?! That's scary, don't say that!" Spoony said, whipping around to look at her.

"Well, I joined the Mystery Study Group."

"Oh? So what happened?"

"It was stupid! Nothing interesting happened. They were all a bunch of noir geeks and mystery fans, but nobody had half the guts to be a real detective."

"Yeah, but isn't that normal? I mean, there really aren't many real mysteries that they could have any control over..."

"Whatever, but I got with the Supernatural Study Group, expecting something cool, and all I saw were occult nerds who wanted to sit around all day doing rituals. That sound like fun to you?"

"Not really."

"I know, right?! Why are the clubs here so boring?! I thought after I got to senior high I'd find some really kickass clubs, but no! It's like if you wanted to go into the Major League and you find out the school you're gonna go to doesn't even have a baseball team!" She furrowed her brows, and her face contorted into a frighteningly angry expression that made her look like she'd lay a million curses over the world. Spoony tapped his chin in thought, then spoke up to Haruhi.

"You shouldn't be surprised if there aren't any clubs here that are exciting enough for you, okay? People are usually content with the lives they already have, and so they do stuff that's probably really boring. The people who do exciting things are the people who do it themselves. People wanted to fly, so they invented planes. Someone wanted to have a light without fire so they invented the lightbulb. Ordinary people just stay the way they are and adopt whatever comes along. Since we're ordinary --"

"Shut up, Spoony."

Haruhi turned away and looked out the window, frowning deeply. Spoony waited for her to say something, but she was silent. He sighed and turned forward again.

On another day, the warm sun tickled the faces of the class, making everyone in the room sleepy. Spoony himself started to nod off and slump over onto his desk.

"Spoony!" Haruhi chimed, and yanked him all the way backwards by the back of his collar, bonking his head on the corner of her desk and making small tears well in his eyes.

"The hell are you doing?" he whimpered, and turned around angrily to glare at Haruhi. However, as she kept her hand on his collar, she matched his glare with a smile that was as bright and warm as the tropical sun. Her eyes had a certain glint to them, rarely seen since her sudden mellowing after the first day of school.

"So I thought about what you said, and I talked to my big sis, and you know what?! I got an idea! I don't even know how I didn't think of this before!"

"Oh, no...what is it?" Spoony muttered.

"If something interesting doesn't exist, I'm enough of a genius to make it myself, right?!"

"And that 'something interesting' is...?"

"A club! I can make my own club! And then I can do all the cool stuff I wanna do!"

"That's lovely. Can you let go now?"

"Hey, what's with the attitude?! Be happy about it, peon!" Haruhi whined, pouting.

"I'll talk about your idea with you later. Just consider where we are right now and then you can share your idea better later."

"Whaddya mean?"

"We're in the middle of class, Haruhi," Spoony said flatly. Haruhi let go of his collar, and he rubbed the sore spot on his head defeatedly as he turned back around. His eyes met the rest of the class, who were staring at them, awestruck. The young English teacher stared at him like she was about to cry from fear. Haruhi mumbled something behind him, and he could hear her opening her notebook again as the class turned their attention back to the teacher, and the teacher returned to the lesson.

Spoony's aching head only served to enhance his unease.


	2. Chapter 2

Just as Spoony expected, Haruhi didn't immediately leave the room after school. Instead, after collecting her things, she firmly and forcefully grabbed his hand, dragged him out of the classroom, and pulled him up the stairs, stopping at the door that led to the roof.

The fourth-floor stairwell they were currently in was currently being used for storage by the Art Club, and so there were such large and related ephemera as giant canvases, busted picture frames, and old war god statues cluttering up the steps. It made a very narrow space even narrower, so when Haruhi reached the door, she immediately turned around and looked down to Spoony.

"I need your help," she said, and grabbed his tie.

"With what?" he replied quietly.

"Help me make a new club, stupid!"

"Why should I help you do something you just suddenly thought of doing?"

"I'm only one woman, Spoony. I need to get a room, find the members, find a sponsor teacher... I want you to do the paperwork for the club, okay? You're skilled enough at that."

"Uh, yeah, sure. What club are you even trying to make anyway?"

"It doesn't matter! Let's make the club first and then depending on what happens, I'll decide what it's really for, okay?"

"That's not a very good plan," Spoony mumbled.

"Listen, okay? When you go home, find out what the paperwork is, and I'll stay here and look for a room and stuff!" Haruhi said proudly, and ran off down the stairs.

"I haven't even agreed to do it..." Spoony whimpered, and he sighed deeply.

 

In the North High student handbook:

_Requirements for organizing a 'club' or 'association': Five North High students or more must be regular and dedicated members. You must have a sponsor teacher, a club name, and a chairperson for the club. A summary of club activities and goals is required, which then requires approval from the Student Council Executive Committee. The club's goals and activities must fit in with the school philosophy of creativity and liveliness. Based on the records and results of the activities, the Executive Committee will decide whether to promote the association into a 'study group'. Furthermore, the North High administration does not provide funding to 'associations' or 'clubs'._

 

Members would be easy to find, especially for Haruhi, who could force anyone to do anything. A sponsor teacher would be a fair bit more difficult, but given the right choices they could easily find someone to sponsor them. The name would have to be something mild, and the chairperson would obviously be Haruhi.

However, the club may involve a fair bit more "creativity and liveliness" than the Executive Committee could handle.

 

“I know all these clubrooms from the inside out,” Haruhi shouted through gritted teeth, dragging Spoony up the stairs by his tie. “And what I know first and foremost is that the Classical Music and Opera Club has only one member! It’s in danger of complete dissolution!”

“S-s-so what’s your plan?” Spoony coughed out as he joined her at the top of the stairs.

“Take it over from the inside,” she replied promptly. She smirked, closed her eyes, and pulled down her goggles over her glasses. “Like a real mad scientist,” she said -- but her voice had changed. It was back to the tone she’d used in her introduction on the first day of school: grating, unhinged, and fitting her new role as not only a mad scientist, but one with power.

“Oh. Oh, god,” Spoony whispered as Haruhi grabbed his tie. “Please. Please, not the tie.”

“Fine. Fine, then,” she said, folding her arms. “What would you rather I do?”

“Anything. Anything else,” Spoony said, throwing up his hands. Haruhi turned around, staring pensively at the ground for a second before backing up sharply and slamming into him, reaching back and under his arms, and hauling him over her back. She staggered as she steadied herself, stooped over with Spoony laying on her back.

“Are you ready?” Haruhi said, her voice only mildly strained. Spoony could only open his mouth before she sped off with him down the hall. As they went down the hall, the muffled sound of singing and orchestral swells grew louder over the loud thumping of Haruhi’s feet. Haruhi grinded to a halt as the music grew its loudest, then dumped Spoony on the ground and opened the door.

Inside, a young lady in a black blazer sat by the window, scribbling away at a piece of paper with a dip pen. Her dense bob covered her face, surrounding it in a thick brown cloud. She looked up at the two, then set down her pen and turned down the radio beside her before looking back to Haruhi.

“I’m Haruhi Insano, and this is my assistant Spoony! I have come to take over your club and galvanize it with loads of fun!” Haruhi shouted, standing confidently and pushing her chest out. “Tell me your name and let me use your clubroom, peon, and I shall give you new life!”

“Haruhi, no, this is embarrassing,” Spoony whispered, and Haruhi jabbed him in the side before looking back at the lady.

The lady’s blue eyes gazed deeply into Haruhi’s goggles, analyzing the patterns and swirls. Haruhi felt her gaze penetrating her defenses and boring into her eyes, and all she could do was blink. The lady turned away, holding the edges of her drawing.

“My name is Kurosawa Yuki,” she said, and held up the picture. Finely drawn in ink was an illustration of Doctor Frankenstein giving life to his creation. “Before I let you carry out your plans, you must answer this, so that I may verify your worthiness.”

“I’ll do anything,” Haruhi replied calmly, her tone of voice softening.

“Who was the real monster?” Yuki asked, tapping the picture.

Haruhi’s lips pursed, and she looked down and away, scanning the room in thought. A mirror hung directly across from her, between the windows of the clubroom. For a moment, she looked into it, gazing into her own goggles, and she turned away sharply. She looked back to Yuki, who held up her hand soothingly.

“There is no need to give an answer. I can tell you are conflicted. My real question has been answered. You may use my clubroom. Take care to not damage my belongings, Miss Suzumiya,” Kurosawa said, turning away and setting the picture on a side table.

“That was unusually easy,” Spoony mumbled. “Weird question too.”

“Don’t get us thrown out, we just got lucky,” Haruhi whispered as they walked deeper into the clubroom. She turned about in the room, her eyes running over all of the surroundings. A clothing rack sat unused in the corner, and several empty tables were neatly arranged in a line. A few bookshelves were filled with CDs and classical music magazines, but others were still empty.

“Nice place,” Spoony said, and Yuki looked at him.

“I’ve been keeping it tidy,” she replied. “Treat it as well as I’ve treated it.”

"Alright!" Haruhi said, throwing her arms into the air with glee. "From now on, the club meets here after school every day! Be there or be square, okay?!"

Spoony groaned as Haruhi shuffled around the room, checking everything.

 

So now they had a club room. However, there wasn't a sponsor teacher, a club name, any kind of activity description, or many of the other things that were needed on the paperwork. As a result, the papers sat idly in Spoony's bag, begging and waiting to be filled.

"Haruhi, we should sort out the paperwork, you know," Spoony grumbled as she thought deeply.

"Nah! We'll decide on that later! That stuff is easy," she said loudly. "Right now we need members. It said at least 5 members, so we should get at least 2 more."

"You're already counting the Classical Music and Opera Club girl?" Spoony asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, duh. That makes things easy anyway."

"That's lovely," Spoony said, putting his face in his hands.

 

The next day, Spoony reluctantly trotted on down to the club room, slouching and lagging behind Haruhi. He grumbled to himself as he went into the clubroom.

Yuki was already there, sitting alone and sketching in her notebook as a triumphant piece blared around her.

"So..." Spoony said, setting down his bag. "Hey."

"Hello," Yuki replied quietly. There was a period of silence as Spoony listened to the music swell.

"So, what are you drawing?" he said, just as the music quieted down.

Yuki held up her notebook, containing an ink-drawn sketch of a strange amalgamation of Donkey Kong, a giant robot, Jesus, and some sort of smoke-riding genie. Spoony's brows furrowed at the sight, and he pointed to it.

"You like doing that stuff?" Spoony asked.

"Very much."

"That's strange."

"I enjoy it."

"I see."

They were silent for about a minute as they looked at each other, and Yuki slowly put the drawing back on her lap. Spoony set his bag on the table and silently begged to leave.

 

"Hey, guys! I'm back!" Haruhi chimed, kicking open the door. "Sorry I'm late, it took me a bit to try and get her." She waved and pulled another person by the wrist into our view. "Look!"

Haruhi had caught a buxom young lady, who had a round, pale face and big blue eyes slightly covered by gold wireframe eyeglasses. She was dressed to leave school, with a prim brown trilby on her head and a big brown shawl cardigan neatly tucked beneath her collar. Her thick thighs were covered by white tights, and her long brown hair was tied into two low ponytails, draped over her prodigious breasts.

The little lady was also in a very big panic.

"Where is this?!" she wheezed in a high, nasal voice. "Who are you?! Why'd you take me here, what do you want with me?! Why are you shutting the door, there's a man here and a creepy girl, what's this, whaat?!"

"Shhh!" Haruhi said, bopping the lady on the nose, immediately making her cease her whining. "Let me introduce you."

"I wanna introduce myself!" she replied.

"Peon! I'm your host, I must be the one to do it!"

"Host...?" Spoony said, turning to Yuki, who shook her head.

"This is Asahina Mikara! She's our sempai!"

"H-hello..." Mikara stammered uselessly. An utter silence swept the room as Haruhi puffed her chest out in pride, Yuki went back to drawing, Mikara silently wept in fear, and Spoony looked between the three of them, slackjawed.

"Where'd you abduct this girl from?!" Spoony moaned.

"I didn't abduct her! I just grabbed her and forced her to come with me!"

"That's the same thing, you idiot!"

"Shut up! Anyway, look at her! She's the perfect tool for my experiments!"

"Eeek! Don't experiment on me, that's wrong!" Mikara whimpered.

"Relax, peon! The experiments aren't on you! They're on absolutely everybody else!"

"And how are you going to pull that off?!" Spoony shouted.

"It's easy!" Haruhi said proudly, before darting behind Mikara. "Look at these cans! They’re the perfect mind control devices!" Her hands hovered over Mikara's breasts.

"The hell are you doing?!" Spoony yelled, as Haruhi moved her hands and laid them over Mikara's breasts.

"Don't squeeze the Charmin!" Mikara screamed, prompting a stunned silence among the club members. Even Yuki had turned, confused, to look at the unfolding events.

Fast, firm footsteps echoed down the hall, and sounded like loud thumps within the clubroom. The doorknob jiggled, and a swift kick busted the unlocked door open.

"What's the big deal here?! Who's breaking out the foreign advertising references?!" a scrawny female teacher shouted, her black-and-red track jacket uncrumpling as she threw out her arms.

"Sensei!" Mikara mewled. "Ueba-sensei!"

"You, with the stupid hair! Quiet down!" Ueba-sensei barked to Spoony, who complied by slamming his hand over his mouth. "And you!" she said, pointing to Haruhi. "Back off!"

"Uhh," Haruhi said, backing up from Mikara with her hands in the air.

"You in the back!" Ueba said, pointing to Yuki. "You are really creepy."

"Hey, back off!" Haruhi said, folding her arms. "What's your problem?!"

"I'm the sponsor teacher for the Comic Club!" Ueba said. "All your shouting and yelling is screwing everybody up! Look at this!" she continued. She held up a drawing of a beautiful girl with an incredibly scribbly and oversized nose. "Look! Look at what you did!”

"Noooo!" Mikara screamed. "It's scary!"

Haruhi blinked in awe. "Uh...okay, yes, ma'am?"

"Good! Good, then!" Ueba said, and marched out of the room.

"So, Mikara, are you part of the Comic Club?"

"Y-yes..."

"Quit that! That'll get in the way of the club activities!"

"How would the Comic Club get in the way of the Classical Music and Opera Club activities? I don't even know what the Classical Music and Opera Club even does..."

"This isn't the Classical Music and Opera Club, fool! This is Haruhi Insano's Brigade to Spread Joy and Obedience All Over The Solar System!"

Spoony stood dumbstruck at Haruhi's declaration. "Did you just replace an already-long club name with an even longer one? And shouldn't it be an association, not a brigade?"

"Well, if we're not even an official association yet, then why shouldn't we be a brigade?!" Haruhi said, looking expectantly at Spoony.

"I don't even know..." Spoony moaned, and put his face into his palms.

"Anyway, since we've got a new member and a name, let's call it a day! See you all tomorrow!" Haruhi said, and happily picked up her things and skipped away.

 

Mikara defeatedly walked over to a chair and slumped into it. She plucked her hat off her head and stuck it on her face.

“Hey, uh,” Spoony began, turning to her. “Why’d you agree to join the club? You seemed really upset about it, you could have just said no.”

“Well, I didn’t expect to be manhandled,” she said, folding her arms. “I kinda wanted to anyway.”

“...Why would you wanna join this dump?”

“I’ve got...stuff to do here. And things. And that girl over there is creeping me out,” she said, and pointed to Yuki. “And I think I ought to be somewhere safe. And that’s what I’m here to do until I have to go back.”

“Back to where?”

“Back to the…” she said, and she slammed her hand over her mouth before slowly pulling it off. “Bear with me. I’m in a daze.”

“That’s...weird, but okay,” Spoony said. He picked up his things and headed for the door before turning back to Mikara. “...You’re kind of adorable. I just thought you ought to know.”

 

The next morning, Haruhi reclined in her desk chair, waiting for Spoony to come. Haruhi slumped so far into her chair her back was almost on the seat, then sprung back up as Spoony sat down.

“Spoony!” she said, and scrambled back into a proper posture. “There was a new transfer student to the first-year class today! I saw one of the Computer Club girls walking her around.”

“That’s nice,” Spoony said dully. “What does she look like?”

“It doesn’t matter what she looks like, she’s a Mysterious Transfer Student!”

“Not such a mystery if you know what she looks like.”

“Not like that!” Haruhi said, and started to bat on her desk. “Mysterious Transfer Students are the kind of transfer students who get in two months into the year under mysterious circumstances. They’ve always got some incredible secret!”

“I bet her secret is that she’s completely normal. You’re ridiculous, Haruhi. Life’s not some TV show.”

“Ugh! Killjoy,” she said, and slouched forward.

 

Later, after the last bell rang, Spoony walked through the halls of the school. He was about to leave the school building for the club building when he was grabbed from both sides.

“Spoony! Hazuki-sensei wants you!” Kairi called from the right. Spoony’s head whipped to the left, his eyes meeting Hazuki’s stern glare.

“You’re dating Haruhi, aren’t you?” Hazuki said, and his eyes burned holes in Spoony’s head.

“Uh, n-”

“Dumbass! Don’t go doing stupid shit like vandalizing the track field just because she tells you to! You’d better wise up before it’s too late.”

Leaving Spoony dumbfounded, they immediately separated from him and disappeared into the crowd. Spoony stood still, his mouth agape, then hustled away to the clubroom.

 

"Man, I need an internet connection in here!"

As Haruhi began to accumulate new equipment in the clubroom, such as a chemistry set, a spare computer, a new stereo system, and a novelty slot machine, she had grown more and more restless with the lack of conveniences.

"How the hell am I supposed to do any research without any damn internet?!"

"You're really pissed off about this, aren't you, Haruhi?" Spoony said, rubbing his forehead.

"It's scary..." Mikara said, twiddling her fingers.

"I'm sick of this!" she said, and kicked up her heels on her desk, nudging away the little black pyramid marked "Brigade Commander". "We gotta go hassle the Computer Society. Come on, pronto."

"Why?! That's so rude!" Spoony said, tailing Haruhi as she immediately got up and left.

"They're the only people I know who could get me connected!" Haruhi said, marching away.

"How about the goddamn computer store?!"

"No! That takes too long!"

Haruhi skittered down the stairs, closely followed by Spoony, Mikara, and Yuki.

 

The four of them arrived at the Computer Society's clubroom. Haruhi firmly knocked on the door, then swung it open and stood proudly at the center of the doorway. A few girls and a tiny second-year boy were idly sitting at various souped-up computers inside.

"Who's in charge here?!" Haruhi shrieked.

"I am," the third-year girl in front said, and stood up, her impressively long brown hair draping over her back and shoulders like a silk curtain. "Computer Society President Nashiko Bousai."

"I need an internet connection in my clubroom," Haruhi declared.

"Uh, okay," Bousai said nervously. "Where is it?"

"The Classical Music and Opera Club room. And I expect you to do it for free!"

Bousai's nervous expression turned flat, silent, and decidedly unimpressed. "We don't do anything for free," she said. "You're gonna have to give us something better than that."

"I'll give you my novelty slot machine!" Haruhi said, folding her arms haughtily.

"Uh..." Bousai said.

"But only if you can beat us at 50 different card games! If you lose, you have to set it up for free!"

"Haruhi, what the hell?" Spoony whispered.

"They're not gonna take the novelty slot machine," Haruhi whispered back to him. "Who takes the novelty slot machine?"

Bousai's eyes widened in confusion. "50 card games?"

"Yeah! Yeah, 50!" Haruhi said proudly, puffing her chest out.

"How are you gonna manage to play 50 different card games?!" Spoony asked.

"The question is: how are THEY gonna play 50 different card games?" Haruhi replied.

"Don't you mean 'how is Spoony gonna play 50 different card games?' Because I know you're not gonna do this yourself," Spoony remarked.

"Just for that, I'll raise my bet! How about 50 different card games  _on motorcycles_?!"

"I can't even ride a normal bicycle!"

"I'll do it for free if you guys shut the hell up in my clubroom!" Bousai yelled, throwing out her little arms. "What the fuck is wrong with you people?!"

Mikara gazed into Bousai's eyes in silent sympathy.

 

So, in her exasperation, Bousai ran an internet connection to the SOS Brigade room, made sure it worked on Haruhi's computer, and gave it all the required trappings, all with Haruhi watching her intently. Spoony and Mikara idly watched Yuki draw as Haruhi bossed the Computer Society President around.

"How fast is the connection?!" Haruhi barked.

"Uh, well, since this is a school, it's kind of on the medium side of things, so --"

"Good!"

After a little while, the job was finished. Immediately after Bousai left, Haruhi turned to Spoony.

"Now make us a website!"

"What?!" Spoony said, looking back up to her. "That was the only thing you wanted to do?"

"It's not the only thing I wanna do, it's just the most important thing right now! Making an SOS Brigade website is gonna draw people in by the truckload!"

"Is it..." Mikara whispered.

"I guess I don't really have a choice, do I?" Spoony said, rubbing his hands on his forehead.

"Nope! No, you don't!" Haruhi said, folding her arms triumphantly. "You're the one person who'll be free for everything!"

"As far as you know," Spoony retorted.

"Get it done in the next day or two."

So he did. He tinkered with it bit by bit during his lunch break the next day, adding a few plain blue hyperlinks onto the crappy white background. Having no idea what Haruhi really wanted, he simply wrote "Welcome to the SOS Brigade!" at the top and threw a hit counter at the bottom, as well as a free email address above it.

"Is this alright for you?" Spoony asked, as Haruhi leered over his shoulder.

"It's acceptable for now," she replied, flipping her hair.

"Do you really think the administration is gonna be happy with an unrecognized association using up their bandwidth?"

"Well, if they find out we've been doing this stuff, we'll just take out the site and act like we didn't do anything wrong," Haruhi said, and shrugged.

He saved the website, published it, and left with Haruhi to go back to class.

 

As Spoony sat down in class, he rifled through his bag. He'd left it in the classroom over the lunch break, but one of the pockets was suspiciously slightly opened. He reopened it, digging his hand in suspiciously, and found a CD case.

The case had a little paper slip and a simple cheap CD-R inside, marked "For you". He picked it up, set it on his desk, and opened it up, pulling out the slip.

"Listen to this," it said, in natural but overly clean handwriting, the kind you'd find in a cheesy handwriting font on a new computer. Spoony guessed it'd be from Yuki, as she was a rather overly-clean person, from whom it'd be natural to see such strange, generic handwriting.

"Hey!" Haruhi chimed, twiddling her fingers as she curiously looked over Spoony's shoulder. "You'll never guess what we're gonna be doing today!"

"I don't know if I wanna guess," Spoony groaned, and he put the CD back in his bag. "Whatever you do, don't go destroying anything."

"Please! I'm never that simple," Haruhi replied, and she gave such a giant grin it'd threaten to rip right through her cheeks.

Spoony went a little pale from fear.

 

After sixth period, Haruhi disappeared. It was a bad sign in an already-escalating situation.

Spoony walked to the clubroom after the final bell rang, although he wasn't sure why he even bothered. When he entered, Asahina and Kurosawa were both there.

"Hey guys," he said, setting his bag on a table. Mikara greeted him with a newly-relaxed expression -- spending time alone with Kurosawa must have been tiring for her.

"Where's Miss Suzumiya?" Mikara said quietly, her eyes widening. "I hope she doesn't make me do something really embarrassing..."

The door slammed open with Haruhi's kick, and she dashed into the room holding two big paper bags.

"Hey everybody!" she said energetically, and she scrambled over to the table with the bags. "Sorry I was late."

"That's oddly considerate of you," Spoony remarked. Haruhi turned and locked the door, and Mikara shuddered at the noise of the lock bolt clicking into place.

"First things first, take a look at these!" Haruhi said, and she pulled out a few flyers from one of the bags. "These flyers are for us to give out to advertise the SOS Brigade's services to the other students today! I had to sneak into the copy room to make them all." She took a few and gave them to each of the others.

"So this is what you skipped class for? You're lucky you're not getting nailed for it," Spoony said, before turning the blank side of the flyer over and reading it.

 

The SOS Brigade Philosophy:

We, the SOS Brigade, are tirelessly pursuing supernatural events in the world! We welcome anyone who has experienced, is experiencing, or will experience any kind of mysterious or supernatural event to come to us for consultation. We will do our best to answer any questions you may have. Please note that we will only investigate events that we deem to be especially interesting. Our email is...

 

"I'm starting to get an idea of what this is all about," Spoony said. "You just want to indulge your sci-fi detective fantasies."

"I'm a doctor, not a detective, Spoony!" Haruhi said, folding her arms. "Anyway, it's time to hand out the fliers. There are gonna be a lot of people out at the entrance who haven't left the school or gone to club yet."

"Okay," Spoony said, and he picked up the paper bag full of flyers.

"Ah. You don't have to go, Spoony," Haruhi said, taking the bag back. "Mikara and I will handle this."

"...what?"

Haruhi rifled through the other bag and pulled out a black garment. As she poured out the rest of the seemingly endless contents of the other paper bag, it became painfully clear what Haruhi's plan was. Spoony stared at the contents of the bag in terror and sympathy for Mikara's soul.

A black leotard with a bunny tail, fishnets, bunny ears, a bowtie, white cuffs, and a white collar, with a full matching set in red.

She was gonna dress herself and Mikara in bunny girl suits.

"Y-you really want me to wear that?"

"Yep!" Haruhi said.

"I'm not gonna wear that!"

"Don't worry about it. I'll wear one too so we can share the pain. And the red one will fit you perfectly, if you're worried about your figure."

"No, I mean, I'm not gonna wear that at the  _school entrance_!"

"As long as I'm here you are!"

Haruhi leapt onto poor Mikara like a lioness catching a gazelle. Mikara squirmed beneath the tyrant's grip.

"Nooooo!"

"Just let me help you!"

She started to pull off Mikara's clothes against her will, right in front of Spoony, who tried desperately not to look at her. Mikara screamed, and to get away, Spoony ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He still could hear the voices coming through the door.

"Hey, don't do that!" "Noooo!"

"Shhh! Stay still!"

"Can't I at least take them off myself?!"

"Nope!"

"Kyaa~! Why me?!"

"You should have just listened to me, then you could do it yourself!"

"Oh nooo!"

After a while, Haruhi piped up from behind the door.

"We're ready, Spoony! You can come back in now!"

She swung the door open. Right in his face, she and Mikara were dressed in incredibly well-fitting bunnygirl suits. Spoony could barely decide whether he had to right to look now when they were actually clothed. Their cleavage was pleasing -- Haruhi was skinny, but the outfit suited her, and Mikara was more than enough woman to look beautiful in it.

"What do you think?" Haruhi said, turning around.

"All that and you still have the balls to ask me what I think?!" Spoony said. "Where'd you even get these? Why doesn't Kurosawa have to have one?"

"I got them on the net. They're really expensive, so I could only get two."

"And you're gonna wear them at the school entrance?!"

"Yep!"

Spoony buried his face in his palms and slumped against the wall as Haruhi picked up the bag of flyers and walked away, her high heels clacking on the floor as they walked out of the clubroom. Mikara looked to Spoony with pleading eyes, but he didn't see them.

He walked back into the clubroom, and his eyes met Yuki's. She pointed to the floor.

"That. Pick it up."

The girls' clothes were scattered all over the floor. Spoony sighed deeply and picked them up one by one.

"Can't you pick them up yourself?!" he asked. Yuki did not answer.

Half an hour later, Mikara returned, totally exhausted. Her eyes were almost as red as a real bunny's, and she didn't seem to want to speak. She stood by the table, shivering with fear. He gently took her shoulders and guided her to a chair. Her scantily-clad body was trembling so hard, he couldn't help but take his jacket off and drape it over her shoulders. Mikara's sobbing, Yuki's aloofness, and Spoony's confusion had brought the mood to an all-time low. The Baseball Club could be heard yelling in the distance.

Haruhi slammed the door open.

"Dammit! What the hell?! Fucking teachers! I didn't even get to hand out half the fliers before they showed up and told us to stop handing them out! The hell is wrong with them?!" she yelled.

"If they ignored something like two half-naked girls handing out flyers at the school entrance, that'd be terrible press for the school! You wanna get them all fired?!"

"I don't care!" Haruhi said. "Mikara was almost crying, and then I got taken to see the principal! They even made Saguri-sensei come in! Club's dismissed for today!"

She flung off the bunny ears and started undressing. Spoony clamored out of the room.

"Mikara! How long are you gonna sit there crying?! Hurry up and change into your uniform!"

After Haruhi left, Mikara emerged too, but stayed behind to talk to Spoony. She was sullen and sorrowful, like she'd just failed a bunch of important exams in a row. She had to lean against the wall, or she'd be blown away like a feather.

"Spoony...?" she said wistfully. "If something happens so that I can't become a pure bride, won't you take me...?"

Spoony's eyes dilated in surprise, and she gave back his jacket feebly.

 

After that day, Haruhi seemed to become even more popular among the students -- not because anyone particularly liked her, but simply for how strange she was. Her antics were almost legendary to the student body.

Spoony sat for lunch with Saki, Hazuki, and Kairi the next day.

“So I heard she was passing out flyers with Asahina yesterday in fuckin’ Playboy bunny suits,” Hazuki said, picking at his noodles. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever had to say.”

“I have no idea what was going through her head,” Spoony said defeatedly. “She’s an enigma.”

“Well, I know a couple things that aren’t a mystery at all, if you know what I mean,” Kairi said, raising her eyebrows. Hazuki blankly stared at her as an uncomfortable silence spread over the table. Saki simply drank her tea in peace.

“Don’t even start,” Hazuki said, shaking his head.

“By the way, little Asahina’s been getting some big buzz lately,” Saki said, setting down her can of tea. “That incident has made her quite interesting…”

“Hey! Bro! Greasy hair man!” a girl called from across the room. She and her comically large posse of dudes and dudettes scrambled through the desks like an all-crushing tornado, making their way towards Spoony.

“Oh, no,” Hazuki said softly, clutching Kairi.

“Brooo. Me and the bros are totally interested in that sweet chick Asahina. So, like, I know you know her and stuff, so like, could you ask her to marry us?”

“...’us’?”

“Yeah, bro, us.”

“...I’ll get right on that,” Spoony groaned, and the gang strutted away.

“What’s the SOS Brigade even for, anyway?” Kairi said, pulling out the flyer.

“I don’t know if I can really articulate that,” Spoony said, scratching his head.

“Well, that’s pretty stupid,” Hazuki said, folding his arms. “You should get going now. Bell’s about to ring.”

Spoony got up, got his things together, and walked out of the room just before the bell rang. He stepped down the stairs, and a gentle hand took his shoulder. He turned around, moving to a safe spot of the stairwell, and looked up to Ryoko’s calm face.

“You’re associating with Haruhi,” she said, and nodded calmly. “You must apply some restraint to her natural energy. Your club mustn’t disturb the peace, or you’ll never get the Student Council’s approval.”

 

That afternoon, Haruhi paced around the clubroom as Spoony and Yuki sat together on an old leather couch in front of her.

“I’m re~a~ll~y bored,” she said, folding her arms. “I’m soooo fucking bored! Why isn’t anyone sending any mail? Why isn’t anyone doing any walk-ins?!”

“Maybe nobody trusts us enough to bring something to us?” Spoony said, and slouched forward. “It’s stupid to go out looking for stuff that doesn’t exist.”

“That’s your problem,” Haruhi said, waving him off. “Mikara’s gone today. What a bummer. I was gonna figure out a new outfit to put on her…”

“Did you find anything out about that ‘mysterious transfer student?’” Spoony grumbled.

“Oh, yeah! Yeah, I did!” Haruhi said, perking up and standing still. “She transferred here from West Junior High -- she skipped a year! By Tesla’s nuts, she must be a genius!” Haruhi cupped her face with her hands in excitement. “I gotta pull her in here and get her involved with us! With circumstances like that, she’s gotta be some kind of supernatural being!”

“Uh huh,” Spoony said, slouching in the couch.

“That’s it! I gotta get her tomorrow!”


	3. The Melancholy of Haruhi Insano (Chapter 3)

Due to that incident, Mikara became quite the household name. After skipping an uneventful day of club, she came back the day after. Haruhi hadn't come yet, so Spoony had simply resorted to fiddling about with his old Othello board, playing against Mikara. Yuki watched intently as they started a new game.

"Haruhi's taking her sweet time, isn't she?" Mikara said distantly.

"Yep," Spoony replied.

"There's a new transfer student who just came in," Yuki said.

"Is there?" Mikara said, raising her head like a curious bird.

"She's in 1-9. Haruhi seems to be totally fixated on transfer students, so I guess she's off to go grab her for some interesting research or something," Spoony said.

"Well, that sounds weird..." Mikara said, resting her chin on her hands.

"Speaking of which, I didn't think you'd ever come back, Asahina," Spoony said, and he put a black piece on the board, then flipped the white pieces.

"I was a little hesitant to do it, but I got a little concerned, so I started coming again."

"What are you concerned about?" Spoony asked, looking up to Mikara.

"Uh, nothing," she replied, looking away.

Spoony turned to Yuki, who was staring at the board strangely, like a newborn kitten amazed at the sight of a big dog. He sat silently for a moment, then piped up.

"Kurosawa, you wanna play?" he asked. Yuki hesitated, blinking robotically, then nodded extremely slightly and stood up. She and Spoony switched seats, and she picked up one of the pieces curiously, turning it in her fingers. Her blue eyes widened with cautious wonder as she picked up another piece and stuck them together with their magnets.

"You ever play Othello before?" Mikara asked, folding her hands in her lap politely. Yuki shook her head.

"Do you know the rules?" Spoony asked, and Yuki shook her head at that too. He sat up in his seat and leaned slightly over the board. "Well, look at this, then, okay?" He started demonstrating the game as he explained. "You've got black, so your objective is to surround the white pieces with your black pieces. And when you put a new piece down, you flip the surrounded white pieces over so that they turn black. And then it keeps going until one of us can't make any more moves, and whoever has more pieces wins."

Yuki nodded, then started to elegantly play against Mikara, who started to become rather shaken by it. Her fingers trembled as she defended her pieces against Yuki, and her eyes grew wary, never looking directly at her opponent. Yuki quickly took the upper hand, dominating Mikara and taking a convincing win. As they cleared off the board to start a new round, the door swung open loudly.

"Hey! Kept you guys waiting, didn't I?" Haruhi greeted, dragging in a small girl. "Here's the new transfer student in the ninth first-year class. Her name's --"

"Kokoro Eiganou, nice to meet you," the transfer student said quickly, and bowed quickly. She was a short, evidently partially-foreign girl with pale skin. Her innocent face was quite charming, with deep blue eyes and a bit of baby fat clinging to her cheeks, and her ruddy blonde hair was combed and teased into a perfect vintage style. Her small, slender frame evoked some kind of old trendiness, as if she and her content smile had made it onto the cover of some old Mod magazine many years ago.

"This is the SOS Brigade clubroom, and I'm the Brigade Commander, Suzumiya Haruhi! Those guys are my three subordinates. And you're gonna be my fourth subordinate, okay?"

"Ah, sure!" Kokoro said, smiling kindly and putting her hands behind her back. "So what does this club do?"

If there had been five million people here or none, they would have all asked that one question. People had approached Spoony and even the other members of the club with that question on multiple occasions, but no one had come away with a comprehensive answer.

"Alright, then. I'll tell you what the SOS Brigade is about!" Haruhi said proudly, and took a deep, dramatic breath.

Spoony's eyes widened in anticipation.

"The SOS Brigade's purpose is to find aliens, time travelers, and espers, and befriend them all to use for our later motives!"

"Later motives?" Spoony said incredulously, looking at Haruhi. "Are you gonna use them in some freakshow or something?"

"Nope. But what I wanna do next is for me to know and for you to find out!"

"As to be expected from Suzumiya-san," Mikara said quietly.

"From now on, call me Haruhi Insano when you're in this clubroom!" Haruhi barked, puffing out her chest with pride. Yuki stayed quiet, observing Haruhi carefully like a confused owl. Kokoro simply gave a little smile.

"Well, that's enough for me, then. I'm joining in even if you're not ready to say everything," she said primly.

"Good! Excellent! Meeting adjourned!" Haruhi said, and clattered off without a word.

Kokoro stepped up to Spoony and held out her hand. "Hey," she said quietly. "You guys can call me Coco if you'd like."

"What's with people and just letting me use their first names?" Spoony mumbled, and he shook her hand.

"Well, maybe they just trust you a lot," Mikara said, rocking back and forth on her chair.

"Not really," Coco said, and she sat down next to Spoony. "Don't feel as comfortable always being referred to by my last name. Makes me feel like everybody's being distant. People here are quite odd like that."

"People here?" Spoony said, raising his eyebrows. "What do you mean by that?"

"It's nothing," Coco said, twisting a single strand of her hair around her finger. Spoony turned away, looking at Yuki watching them. They were all rather silent for a minute.

"Well, we can leave now, I guess," Spoony said, looking around.

"Does every meeting end this awkwardly?" Coco asked, raising her eyebrows.

Mikara nodded cutely. "Just about."

"That's really quite charming," Coco replied, smiling at Spoony. "I guess I'll be going, then."

"Me too," Mikara said, walking over to the table to pick up her bag.

As Spoony started to leave, Yuki took his shoulder tensely.

“Have you listened to the CD?” she asked quietly.

“Uh, no, not yet. I haven’t had the time.”

“Do it tonight.”

So he did. When he arrived home, he put his stuff down, took the dinner his sister prepared for him, and hurried into his room with the CD in his pocket. He stuffed the CD into his laptop and let it play. It was simply an hour-long mixtape of bunch of excerpts from operas, with the occasional film score track interspersed. Spoony’s eyelids grew heavy as the CD grew to a close.

A voice pierced through the silence at the end.

“Thank you for listening. Please come to the park outside the stadium at 7:00. I have something for you.”

“...seven tonight?” Spoony mumbled. “I wonder if I missed it.” He turned to the alarm clock on his nightstand. “Shit. It’s 6:40.”

He stood up, threw a jacket on, and rushed out of his room.

“Sis, I’m gonna go to the stadium. I’ll be back at like, 8.”

“Just be back on time,” Spoony’s sister said, and she adjusted her police cap on the hat rack.

He stepped out of the house and walked quickly down the sidewalk. He shook his head slightly. If Yuki weren’t there, he might as well laugh at himself for how stupid he was.

It seemed like Spoony wouldn't be able to laugh anyway.

Since he was both quite responsible and rather easy to tire, he was only able to make it to the park by ten past seven. The park was deserted at this late hour, but the noises of the cars and trains of the city were overwhelming. He walked into the park and found Yuki's slim figure sitting pretty under a lamppost. As she noticed him, she slowly stood up.

"You happy I finally got here?" Spoony said.

She nodded.

"You waited here every day?"

She nodded again.

"...do you have something to tell me that you can't tell me at school?"

She nodded again and walked in front of Spoony.

"This way," she said, and she walked away like a ghost on its path. Spoony followed her, performing surprisingly well for how closely she blended with the night, with her silent steps in the grass. After a few minutes of walking, she stopped in front of an apartment complex near the station.

"Right here," she added. She took out her entry pass and put it up to the sensor, and the glass door in front of them opened as Spoony looked around nervously. They made a beeline for the elevator, and they stood together silently as the elevator ascended to the seventh floor.

"...Where are we going?" Spoony asked.

"My home," Yuki replied flatly.

"What? Why are you taking me to your home?"

"Don't worry. No one else lives in it but me." She opened the door to room 708 quietly, then stepped in and showed him into the apartment. "Enter."

Spoony trembled as he entered and took off his shoes. It was like he'd just boarded a pirate ship, except the pirate ship looked like a fancy condo no one had bothered even living in. There weren't any curtains, nor was there any furniture, besides a little table with a warm blanket over it.

"Sit down," she said, before entering the kitchen. Spoony knelt at the table and started thinking about why a girl would invite a boy to her house while her parents were away. Yuki mechanically put a teapot and cups on a tray, then sat across from Spoony at the table.

Then they were silent.

She didn't even pour tea for him, and her coldness made him start to tremble again. He tried to break the ice.

"Kurosawa...where's your family?"

"I don't have any."

"Uh...I know they're not at home...have they gone on vacation or something?"

"I've been the only one here since the beginning."

"You don't live on your own, do you?"

"I do."

"You're a first-year girl living alone in a ritzy apartment without your parents?"

"I suppose."

"...What is it that you want to see me for, anyway?"

"Drink," she said, and poured a cup of tea for him. He took it hesitantly, then drank it.

It was not quite as good as Mikara's tea, but it had a sweetness to it that was slightly off, as if it'd been made with some kind of artificial sweetener. Spoony appreciated it all the same -- free tea was never reprehensible tea to him.

"Is it good?" she asked.

"...Yeah. Yeah, it is good."

He finished, then placed the cup on the table and opened his mouth to speak, but Yuki filled the cup back up instead. He drank it again, and set it down, expecting to finally be able to say something. Then, she filled it back up, and he drank it. By then, though, the pot was empty, and so she simply set it aside.

"Will you please tell me why you brought me here? What is it that you want to tell me?"

"It's about Suzumiya Haruhi," Yuki said, and she straightened herself out elegantly like a calibrating machine. "It's about her and me." She paused for a while, then folded her hands on her lap.

"What about you and Suzumiya?"

Yuki looked mildly uncomfortable. She seemed to be experiencing a large amount of emotional upheaval that could only be succinctly conveyed in a mere expression.

"It is hard for me to convey this in words, so there may be some errors in communication. But Suzumiya Haruhi and I are not normal human beings."

"I figured."

"That's not what I meant. I don't mean that we are merely deviations from the typical personality and interest makeup of the human race, but that we are actually not ordinary human beings like you."

"I don't get it."

"The Integrated Data Entity is the organization that oversees the data contained within the universe. They have created me and many other Humanoid Interfaces for communicating with humans and similar biological entities. My particular line of work is to observe Suzumiya Haruhi and upload whatever data I collect to the Integrated Data Entity. I have been performing that task since I was born three years ago. Since then, few abnormalities have been discovered, but now another factor besides Suzumiya has showed up."

"..."

"That factor is you."

"In the vast sea of data known as the universe," Yuki started, "there are many sentient data entities that possess no corporeal form. They started out as pure data, but as they collected more information, they became sentient, and evolved by collecting other data. Since they're nothing but data, with no corporeal form to speak of, not even the most advanced optical devices can detect them. They have been expanding with the universe since the inception of the universe itself. To them, this planet on the edge of the Milky Way would normally be insignificant, since many other planets in this galaxy can sustain life. But as you humans evolved, they developed the ability to actively seek knowledge about the universe." Yuki took a deep breath. "For a long time, we have believed it impossible for biological lifeforms to actively seek that knowledge, for their transmission and collection abilities were limited. But now that you have evolved to become highly sentient beings, we have become interested in observing you in order to see how we ourselves can evolve further. However, there was an anomaly that caught our attention."

"Huh?" Spoony said, raising his eyes to Yuki.

"Three years ago, there was a very abnormal data hotspot on the surface of the planet, here in the Japanese archipelago. The data sparked from this hotspot eventually spread all over the planet and started to reach into outer space. As ordinary humans can only process a certain amount of data, this was a highly unexpected event. Suzumiya created a massive flare of data all on her own. The release of this data continues to happen at random intervals, for Haruhi is completely unaware of her powers. However, my analysis has shown that, unlike many others, she could eventually be able to control her powers. This is the hallmark of a high-potential Warper, the type of data-manipulating being that the IDE needs to collect in order to complete their auto-evolution.

"Because they are entities, and therefore cannot communicate with humans or interact with the corporeal world, the IDE created me, and many others, to interact with the world at large. There are many worlds in this universe, almost too many to count, so as a result there are many Interfaces. However, only a select few have been chosen to attempt to complete my other task. There are many factions of the IDE that are all competing to be able to form a highly secure emotional bond with Suzumiya. That bond will allow not only for the close observation of all high-potential Warpers, but also for the use of them to combat various degradations of the universe's structure."

"Kurosawa?"

"Yes."

"My head hurts. I have no idea what you're even talking about."

"Please believe me," Yuki said, and her face grew very grave. "I can only convey so much data through speech. I am nothing more than a terminal interface for this data. I'm unable to communicate everything to you."

"Well, why are you telling me this? What's special about me?"

"I have observed that you have been chosen by Suzumiya Haruhi. Perhaps for her you play a very important role. There are endless possibilities for you and her."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. I am serious."

"So what keeps me from telling her everything?"

"The IDE has deemed such a thing extremely hazardous to the safety of your reality right now. Also, if you told her, she would likely not believe you."

"...you know what? Count me out. Please excuse me, thank you for the tea, it was nice," Spoony said, standing up to leave quickly. "See you at school," he added, before hustling out of the room and into the hallway.

After he could no longer be heard walking down the hall, Yuki looked down defeatedly, and her eyes drifted down in shame.

The next afternoon, Spoony walked into club to find a most unusual sight.

“What?! Why’d you put me in this?!”

Mikara was clad in a frumpy brown coat and an undersized purple checked shirt. The way it stretched over her bosom revealed her cleavage in a rather embarrassing manner. Her normal brown hat was pushed down on her head, and her fingers barely poked out from the too-long sleeves. Coco and Haruhi surrounded her, fixing her rumpled hair.

“Why is she in that?” Spoony asked, and Haruhi perked up.

“If she’s scantily-clad all the time, all the attention might wear her out! So I wanted to put her in something that’d cover up all the right spots while still looking perfectly sexy and adorable!”

“Why didn’t you just leave me in my uniform…?”

“Anyway, Spoony, you came just in time. I’ve got an announcement to make.”

“...okay.”

“Since no one’s come with any questions, and we haven’t found anything here in the school, I’m calling a super-special meeting on Saturday!”

“Oh, no,” Mikara whispered.

“We’re gonna go around town looking for supernatural phenomena! I don’t hear anybody saying no, so let’s meet up at the north station at nine! Do we all agree?”

“Uh,” Spoony grunted.

“If you disagree, I’m gonna destroy you and everything you love!”


	4. The Melancholy of Haruhi Insano (Chapter 4)

Spoony rushed into the north station, heaving breaths as Haruhi and the others noticed his lateness.

“You’re 5 minutes late!” Haruhi said, folding her arms.

“I got a condition, okay? Chill out.”

“Whatever. You’re late, so you have to pay all the bills for lunch. Anyway, here’s what we’re gonna do.” She leaned over and put up her hands. “We’re gonna split into two parties, and if any of us find anything, we’re gonna call each other and figure out what to do next. And then, when we’re all done, we’re gonna do a debriefing at club. That’s all.”

“How are we gonna decide the parties?” Mikara said nervously.

“We’re drawing lots!” Haruhi pulled out a set of toothpicks, some with one mark, and some with two. She stuck them into the middle of their group, and everyone picked one.

“Hmm. I’ve got two marks on mine,” Mikara said.

“Me too,” Spoony added.

“Seems like we three all have one mark,” Coco remarked.

Haruhi puffed up with frustration, then shook her head. “Whatever you do, Spoony, this is not a date!”

“...I didn’t think it was a date…”

“Watch yourself!”

“Hey,” Coco interjected. “What are we supposed to even be looking for anyway?”

“Well, you ought to look for anything or anybody who looks suspicious. And also for portals to another dimension or something!”

“Alright, I got it.”

“You guys go east and we’ll go west. Let’s go!” Haruhi said, pumping her fist into the air.

Mikara and Spoony walked east in silence, the two of them smiling quietly to each other occasionally. The blossoms on the trees spread a pleasant fragrance through the air, and the breeze blew Mikara’s hair and her purple checked shirt gently. They crossed onto a bridge over the river.

“You know, I’ve never been on a walk like this before, with a guy,” Mikara said.

“What, really?” Spoony said incredulously. “Are you kidding me? You’re one of the most beautiful girls in the school. I had people walking up to me asking me for your hand in marriage.”

Mikara stifled a laugh and folded her arms as they moved aside to the side of the bridge. “That’s great. But yeah, I’ve never been in a relationship. I haven’t even been on a nice nature walk with someone else before.”

“Why don’t you try it? There’s a first time for everything.”

“I can’t get involved in a relationship right now...I’m sorry if I let you down.”

“Well, I guess that’s alright,” Spoony said, and he leaned onto the rails of the

Mikara bashfully looked around, twiddling her fingers nervously as she and Spoony stood.

“C-can I tell you a secret?” she said.

“Go ahead,” Spoony replied, not even looking at her.

“I’m...I’m not from this time. That’s as much as I can really tell you, because I was sent here. And time travel is so dangerous that I can’t tell you anything that would corrupt the future. And even if I tried, I have mental blocks installed into my brain that prevent me from telling you too much.”

“How does that even work?”

“Well, uh...consider it like this, right? Time isn’t flowing like the river, but instead, it’s made up of many planes, like the pages of a flipbook. Travelling through time is like drawing a new picture over a single page of the book -- there isn't any continuity between different time frames.”

“Um...that kind of makes sense...but what does this have to do with you?”

“Three years before now, there was a massive timequake, shattering the time planes and blocking time travel to any further in the past than that one point. There's a massive temporal faultline there, and nobody knows why it exists. We do know, however, that it could spit out ancient monsters at any given point in time, and Haruhi caused it all.” Mikara adjusted herself and took a brief pause. “I’ve been specifically chosen by my superiors to not only monitor Haruhi, but to defeat any rogue beasts the timequake brings here.”

“Huh. Well, that’s weird.”

“You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to…”

“Well, maybe I’ll need a little more proof.”

Mikara’s doe eyes stared at him awkwardly. “Like what?”

“What’s the year you’re from?”

“Classified information.”

“How many people are in your organization?”

“Classified information.”

“Do they have zoos in the future?”

“Classified information!”

“Hm,” Spoony said, and he folded his arms in self-justification.

“I can give you a different kind of proof…” she mumbled. She looked around carefully, wringing her hands slightly. “I can’t fight with my strength alone,” she added, and she ran her hand up her right hip. A bright flash of light came from her hand, and she pulled up an old brown flintlock pistol and turned it in her hands.

“I see…”

“Hopefully I won’t have to use it for a long time.”

The lilies floated on the surface peacefully as the fish made calm ripples in the water. “...Can I just ignore what you told me and just pretend you’re totally normal?”

“Yeah, if that helps.”

Spoony grinned and set his hands on his knees.

“What’s your real age?”

“Classified information.”

Spoony’s phone rang angrily, and he answered it to an even angrier voice.

“You’re late!” Haruhi shouted. “You’re so late! Get back to the burger shop by the north station, now!”

With their mouths full of food, Haruhi made the others draw lots again. Spoony got the twice-marked toothpick again, as did Yuki. Haruhi scowled to herself and stood up, slamming her hands on the table.

“Whatever! Meet us in front of the station at four!”

Spoony and Yuki headed south on the main road, wandering aimlessly through the town.

“So, uh...what’d you do yesterday, Kurosawa?” Spoony said.

“I went to school.”

“Well, duh...but what else did you do?”

“I ate lunch.”

“...Did you listen to some good music?”  
“Always.”

Spoony shoved his hands in his pockets in defeat, then bit his lip. “You know where they’ve got a lot of good CDs? The library. Let’s just go there, okay, Yuki? You can use my card if you find anything.”

“You don’t think she’ll suspect?”

“Nah. I don’t really care.”

As they pulled in, Spoony started to lead Yuki to the CD section.

“Man, I used to love reading. This was the place for me... I wonder what happened. Now it’s so boring…”

Yuki sharply turned towards the DVD section. Spoony tripped over himself trying to follow her through the racks. She started to pluck DVDs off the rack in a certain section, stacking up the cases in his hands. He looked down at the rapidly-forming pile, trying to read the titles.

Some were action flicks, some were 80’s and 90’s kids movies. However, they were clearly all in English, and all _very cheesy_.

She finished, and she led him to the checkout counter. The clerk checked out all of the DVDs, then hauled them into a couple of plastic bags. Spoony took them, his arms dropping straight to the floor, and as they walked out, Yuki plucked the bags out of his hands and slung them onto her shoulders.

“Dude, what are you gonna even do with all these movies?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Watch them. Perhaps you are not aware that that is what people tend to do with these.”

“So you let me take you here in anticipation of borrowing Surf Ninjas?”

“It was there.”

“You got it because it was there?! What are you gonna tell me next, that you only took Seven Samurai because it was there?”

“No, that is an exception. It is time that I live up to my family name.”

Spoony’s phone buzzed loudly in his pocket. He pulled it out hastily and answered Haruhi’s call.

“You’re late again! Get back here, you lazy bastard, or you’re gonna face the consequences your whole life!”

“Yes, Haruhi.”

Together in the north station again, the four subordinates stood quietly as their brigade leader barked at them.

“Dammit, Yuki, this was a paranormal investigation, not a shopping trip!”

“I did not purchase these.”

“You’re telling me you bought these with Spoony’s money?! _I_ need to use Spoony’s money!”

“We went to the library. They were borrowed.”

“You were still dawdling!”

“There could have been ghosts in the library. Or magic portals,” Coco said.

“Well, there could have been, but we didn’t find any,” Spoony replied, folding his arms.

“Pfft. Fine,” Haruhi said, and she shook her head in frustration. “I’ll hold the debriefing on Monday. You all can go home! Now!”


	5. The Melancholy of Haruhi Insano (Chapter 5)

Monday came, and the rainy season went into full force with it. The humidity was killer, and the students all sweat buckets throughout the school. The steep hill leading up to the school made things even worse, as Spoony, drenched in sweat, came to class later than he would have, although still before the bell. He was resigned to fanning himself pitifully with a pencil board and wiping his sweat on a handkerchief.

Haruhi rushed in mere seconds before the bell rang and shuffled into her chair, heaving breaths and wiping her forehead on the wristbands of her uniform. She looked to Spoony with dazed eyes.

"I'd like to be fanned too," she said, her voice breathy and tired.

"Do it yourself," Spoony groaned, and she glared at him angrily. "Say, Suzumiya, do you know the story of the Bluebird of Happiness?"

"What?" Haruhi squeaked. "Is the heat getting to your head?"

"Uh, no, it's nothing," Spoony said, biting his lip.

"Then don't ask about it," she replied, scowling. Saguri-sensei slipped in, holding fans like barrels in her arms, hastily set them up, and started homeroom.

The class seemed to be brought down by Haruhi's mood, and her glare was like a weight on Spoony's back all day. The bell at the end of the day was never sweeter than this one, which let him away from Haruhi's grip. Today, he came to the clubroom to find nothing but Yuki starting up a movie in the DVD player. She watched movies so often she seemed like a permanent fixture in the room, but it wasn't much of a bother to Spoony. He sat next to her, half-heartedly watching some cheesy action flick before Coco gingerly opened the door.

"Hello, Spoony, Kurosawa," she said calmly, stepping lightly into the room. "Good day to you both."

"Hey, Eiganou," Spoony called from the sofa. "What's up?"

"I need to talk to you about something. You don't have to watch that if you don't want to, it’s mostly pretty terrible."

"Did you predict what happened?" Spoony quipped, raising his eyebrows and turning to Coco.

"Uh, no. I saw the movie," she remarked. "That's what you do with movies. Movies aren't meant to be predicted before they're even released or you get to see them, that's not right."

"You've got a strong moral compass for movies," Spoony said, gesturing at her.

"Movies are important, Spoony," Coco said, folding her arms and pouting. "Anyway, I need to talk to you. Right now," she said sharply, and she tugged on Spoony's sleeve with her little hand. "Come on. Chop chop."

They went out of the clubroom and carried on out to the cafeteria, sitting at one of the little tables. Coco slunk away to grab drinks for the both of them, and returned with a cup of Earl Grey and a hot coffee. She set the coffee in front of Spoony before sitting primly in a seat across from Spoony.

"So I'm assuming you've already talked to Asahina and Kurosawa," Coco said, taking a sip of her tea. "Judging by the way you're reacting to things."

Spoony sighed deeply. "Yeah."

"So what do you know?"

"I know Suzumiya's not normal, I guess."

"That makes things easy for me!" she chimed, clapping gently. "You're perfectly right."

Spoony threw his face into his palms. "Ohhh… Just tell me what you really are... Don't tell me. You're an esper or something, right? Right?" He slumped into his hands and moaned.

"Oh, are you worn out by all this?" she said softly, patting Spoony on the head. "No need to assume. While it might not be exactly what you're thinking of, I am an esper. I do possess paranormal powers, but they're more than just the predictions you saw."

Spoony picked up his coffee and started drinking it in silence. He scrunched up at its saccharine sweetness, too much like Coco for his preferences.

"I'd rather not have had to do all that paperwork just to get into the school for the club, but I didn't think Kurosawa and the other girl would approach her so suddenly. Everything's happening so quickly that it's hard to get all my ducks in a row," she said, pouting. "Before, they observed so… silently."

Spoony grimaced at the way Coco spoke of Haruhi, like some kind of endangered animal instead of a living, breathing person. Noticing his discontent, she raised her hands in submission.

"Hey, hey. We're not gonna destroy her or anything, we're just observing her and protecting her. That's what we're here to do!"

"We? You said 'we'?" Spoony said, almost spitting out his drink in surprise. "You mean there's a whole bunch of people like you running around?"

"Well, not as many as you think. There are maybe about ten of us espers. I don't know everything, since I'm relatively low-ranked compared to everybody else. We're all part of the Organization."

"The Organization?"

"Yeah," Coco said before drinking her tea. "There might be more members of the Organization, and I don't know any secret goals they might have or anything. Everything seems to be run by the bigwigs at the top."

Spoony took a long, deep breath. "So, this secret group, right? Your Organization. What are they supposed to do?"

"Well, as you may guess, the Organization was formed three years ago, and our priority is to observe Suzumiya Haruhi. To be brutally honest, that's our sole purpose. I'm guessing you understand that now. Also, I'm not the only person who's been close to her, definitely not the first to infiltrate North High to do it. There have been more than a few moles watching her for the past three years."

Spoony rose in his seat, almost spilling his coffee. "What? Are you joking?"

"I can't guarantee that all of them necessarily like her personally, though."

Coco drank her tea in silence as Spoony slumped in his chair defeatedly. Together they sat for a while, barely making eye contact, until she spoke up.

"I can't explain to you everything that happened three years ago. I just woke up one day with these powers. It wasn't long until I ran into the Organization, but if I hadn't been so lucky, I would have probably freaked out and done something terrible to myself, thinking there was something seriously wrong with me." She smiled and chuckled to herself. "Although I guess I might be screwed up on my own. But there are more pressing matters to think about."

"Like what?" Spoony said, and she looked to the side thoughtfully. She rubbed her chin in contemplation for a moment.

"Where do I even begin...?" she murmured, thinking thoroughly before perking up. "When do you think the world began? The Big Bang, probably, right?"

"Yeah?"

Coco tented her fingers. "Most people _would_ say the Big Bang. But I know a lot of people in the West would say it started sooner, right? Maybe about several thousand years ago. And along the same thinking, they'd say that a person-like being, God, made it that recently. And perhaps the things science would date to millions and billions of years ago were just put into place as part of an effort to make the environment make sense within itself?" She leaned over. "That's the way we think Haruhi works. A considerable possibility, to us, at least, is that she made the entire world three years ago."

"What? But I remember stuff that happened to me more than three years ago! And there's all kinds of history we've all been studying for years and years! That's fucking ridiculous!"

"Maybe it is. But that's part of what I said, right? All the stuff you remember from before then might just have been constructed so you didn't question who you were or what the true nature of the universe is. Everything you know might just be part of a fragile reality stretched over the bare skeleton of the universe."

Spoony gazed into Coco's eyes intently, trying to glean some kind of coherence from her words.

"Spoony? You ever seen the Matrix?" she asked, and he shook his head before she slumped in her chair. "I need to see if Kurosawa got it from the library. Maybe a little bit of this stuff would make more sense once you saw it."

"Never mind, okay?" Spoony mumbled, shaking his hands. "What's this all got to do with Haruhi?"

"So some people believe in God, and similar things to God, right? This all-knowing, all-powerful, all-seeing being who can create and destroy the world at will? That person, to us, is Haruhi. And this whole world is working like clockwork according to her specifications, like one big lucid dream. But at any time, if she felt like it, she could take away our entire existence and replace it with one that's more appealing to her, like a little kid who doesn't like his old sandcastle and decides to make a new one. But I like this world, despite all its dark places. I feel like this world is worth living in! That's why I work with the Organization, so that we can keep her life peaceful, and save the world."

"Why don't you just tell her not to destroy everything?"

"She doesn't know she even has powers. If she did know, she might not be able to take it, and it would be too difficult for anyone to talk her out of making a new world." Coco tapped her knees in thought. "Since she doesn't know she has powers, they're not working at their complete potential. Everything she does right now is merely by statistical manipulation. A few things are obviously her work, though."

"Like what?" Spoony said, playing with his empty cup of coffee.

"Think about it. If she weren't interested in aliens, espers, and time travelers and such, would we exist?"

"I guess not," Spoony replied, setting his cup down. "But what about me?"

Coco rested her head in her hands. "As far as I've been able to glean, you're a completely ordinary person. But you're the one Haruhi chose to become the closest to, so you should be careful. Not only would she turn the world on a dime because of you, but you might be able to stop her from doing something like that on her own."

Spoony sat in silence for a beat, then leaned toward Coco. "If you have special powers, you can show them to me, can't you?" he said curiously.

"They come and go at will," she said, shrugging with one shoulder. "Maybe you'll get to see them one day. But I can't just activate them on my own terms."

"I guess that's too bad," Spoony said, frowning.

"Anyway, I've taken a lot of your time," she said firmly, standing up from her chair and pushing it in. She polished off her cup, took Spoony's, and nodded to him. "I'm gonna go home. I'll see you some other time, okay?"

"Yeah," Spoony said, stuffing his hand in his pants pocket. Coco coyly winked to him, then walked away in perfect step, her skirt swishing as she walked. He watched her throw out the cups and leave before he left the cafeteria himself, walking all the way back to the clubroom alone.

Spoony opened the clubroom door hastily and started to walk in.

"Hey, Kurosawa --"

Mikara stood still, her blue eyes wide open like a deer in the headlights, clad in nothing but her underwear. Spoony froze with his hand on the door handle, his eyes locked in a stalemate with hers.

"I-I'm sorry," Spoony stammered, and he promptly slammed the door behind him before Mikara screamed a banshee wail that threatened to pierce the walls.

After a bit, Mikara knocked on the door again, and let Spoony back into the room. She had changed into her costume, as Haruhi had asked, and had a cup of fresh tea for him.

"Sorry about that," she said, her hands shaking slightly. "I freaked out because I thought you were perving on me."

"Yeah, sorry, I should have knocked," Spoony said, or maybe she should have locked the door, he thought. Either way his feelings about her smooth pale thighs and her nearly-glowing white breasts were helpfully shielded by his oversized blazer and his own sense of panic. He took the cup of tea she offered him and started to happily sip it, thankful that the tea could wash away the strange over-sweetened taste of Coco's coffee.

Yuki looked at him coolly and fluidly beckoned him to come over to her side with one hand, holding the DVD player remote firmly in the other.

"Come, Spoony," she said. "I want to show you this section of the movie."

Mikara and Spoony gathered around Yuki like little ducks, and curiously, their eyes became fixed on the TV screen. Yuki pressed play, and within seconds, a bomb blew up at an arena and merely pushed the protagonists backwards, with them being shielded by a single Coca-Cola vending machine, which was practically being fried by the flames. The two behind her gaped at the sight, while Yuki herself grew a faint smile, evidently deeply amused by the scene.

Haruhi never did show up that day. As the others finished club, though, Spoony noticed Yuki carrying herself differently, as if the silly sight she'd shown them had permanently put a new spring in her step. He shook it off and walked home as the sun set behind him.

"Why didn't you come to club yesterday? I thought you wanted to hold a debriefing."

Spoony was turned around to Haruhi again the next morning, chatting with her. She slumped over her desk impatiently.

"I held it on my own yesterday, loser. I went back and retraced our steps. Besides, I didn’t really want to take everybody out again. When we went north last time, I had to convince Coco to only buy 5 bags of bargain DVDs."

She wiped her sweat on her collar, then sighed deeply.

"It's so hot, what the hell? When are we gonna switch to the summer uniforms?"

"Suzumiya, I don't know if I've said this before, but what do you think finding aliens and espers and whatever is gonna do for you? What benefit do you think it's going to have? Why not just be normal?"

She scowled at him, and sprung up in her chair. "Being normal is lame. What kind of life is that?"

"Can't you find something like a nice boyfriend? Wouldn't that be enough for you? It is for all the other girls. Besides, you might find an alien or something while you do it, and then you'll kill two birds with one stone. And there are tons of guys lining up to date you. Won't you at least try to indulge them?"

"I don't care about having a boyfriend in high school. He'll only have lust for me. I don't just want to have sex with someone, because I don't have any passion for that," Haruhi said. She rested her head on her palms. "You ever think about how boring sex is, Spoony? I have my needs, yeah, but I don't need other people to help me. Intercourse is like sweeping the floor, or plunging the toilet. Back, forth, in, out, such monotonous work. If I'm gonna start dating someone, they actually have to like me for who I am, not for how much they want to fuck me."

"I see," Spoony said.

"And if I started dating some dude, then what would happen to the SOS Brigade? I just started it."

"Well, maybe you should make it more entertaining, then you can attract more members."

"I don't want just anybody joining the club, though. I've already got my beautiful Asahina and a mysterious transfer student, that should be enough for now. If someone wants to join, they ought to be really interesting. I don't even know, though. Why hasn't anything interesting happened yet?!"

She slumped over, planting her face in her desk in defeat, and slept soundly through class without anybody noticing.

After school, in his shoe locker, Spoony found a little note.

“Hello Spoony! Please meet me at the 1-5 classroom after everyone’s left.

-Irafune Ryoko”

So he waited a little while, and once the hall was empty, he walked back to the classroom.

The door opened so easily, it seemed like it’d moved on its own. Ryoko, all slick hair and gentle smiles, stood by the blackboard, and started to walk down an aisle between the desks.

"You're late."

"Yeah, sorry, Irafune," Spoony said casually, clinging to the door.

"Come in," she said, and he seemed to be pulled away by an invisible force. "I've been looking for you."

"You lookin' for me?" Spoony replied in a faux-tough-guy tone, and Ryoko giggled in response.

"I have, and I have a question for you."

"Yeah?"

Ryoko stepped forward and looked into Spoony's eyes. "You know how they say it's better to do something and regret it than to not do it at all? Do you think that makes sense?"

"Yeah, I guess. I guess the meaning makes sense..."

"If you're in a situation where keeping the status quo isn't going to get you anywhere, and you can't really think of a safe way to improve it, what would you do?"

"I dunno, what are you trying to improve on? The economy? Your relationship with somebody?"

"Wouldn't you say it'd be better to just stick with your first instinct?" Ryoko replied, smiling sweetly. "And then face the consequences, of course, but at least something would have changed."

"Uh, I guess so."

"That's what I think," Ryoko said, leaning forward with her hands behind her back. Her glasses glowed with the sunset's light. "And since no one's willing to take the first step to make a change, and put someone ahead of somebody else, I'm going to take this in my hands. Even if I lose in the end, we won't be in a stalemate, right?"

"The fuck are you talking about, Irafune? Is this some kind of prank?"

"You know what's _bullshit_? I'm getting tired of watching that cunt Haruhi fuck around without making any decisions. She doesn't even know her own powers. Let's see what happens when I kill you." Ryoko pulled out a sharp steel knife from behind her and quickly swiped near Spoony's neck. In a second, Spoony dodged what would have been a near-fatal hit.

"What the fuck?!" Spoony yelped, scrambling away. "Why the fuck are you trying to kill me?!"

"Are you worried or something?" Ryoko asked politely, stepping towards him. "Are you afraid to die? You don't like it? I don't give a flying fuck about the death of a minor organic entity."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, but I think I should feel insulted or something," Spoony said, backing away. "Dude, what the hell? Put that away!"

"I don't get what you mean," Ryoko said. "You know, I really do think you should fucking die." She said this and immediately held her knife to her waist and charged Spoony. He scrambled away to find the door, but found only solid concrete walls. He skittered all over the room, tailed by Ryoko, but as he found cover, it disappeared.

"I have control over this area of space, so I blocked all the exits. Now you can't escape, but I can. Ain't that some shit?" she said, smiling serenely. "You're up shit creek without a paddle, Spoony."

"Aren't you supposed to be the cool class monitor, who doesn't speak unless spoken to, and is really nice to everybody?! What the hell happened there?" Spoony yelled. He picked up a chair and threw it at Ryoko, but it froze in midair.

"Just give up. You can't even escape, you useless little shit." Spoony froze in place, his eyes wide with terror, as Ryoko stepped forward. "I should have done this from the start. When you die, and Haruhi finds out, I'll be able to gain a massive advantage. It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance. So let's get it over with." She lowered the knife to Spoony's neck slowly and painstakingly. His heart raced and his blood ran cold.

As the knife was less than an inch from him, he dropped to the floor unconscious.

"Fuck!"

The ceiling crumbled and the concrete surroundings turned to sand as Yuki crashed in. Ryoko swiveled around, alerted to her presence, and brandished her knife.

"You're really not very good at constructing spaces, are you, Ryoko?" Yuki taunted monotonously, holding away Ryoko's knife. "Your data lockdown was incomplete, so it was quite easy to get in."

"Shut the fuck up, critic. You wanna get in my way, huh?" Ryoko said, pulling her knife away. "Well, I didn't kill the motherfucker. But you know one of us is gonna get the upper hand after this."

"Dumbass," Yuki said flatly.

"What are you gonna do about it? This place's data is under my jurisdiction."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but your entire construct has been disintegrated. I have just as much control over this place as you do," Yuki replied, and sized up Ryoko, her face mere centimeters from the assailant.

"Asshole," Ryoko said, and promptly stabbed Yuki in the shoulder. Yuki nonchalantly stepped away, softly chanting a short set of commands.

SELECT serial_code

FROM database

WHERE code='data'

ORDER BY aggressive_combat_data

HAVING terminate_mode

"Target name: Irafune Ryoko. Hostility: confirmed. Disconnecting target's organic information interface."

She barely finished speaking before Ryoko tossed twelve brown, strangely-shaped spears through her chest. Yuki began to bleed profusely from her wounds, and blood pooled on the ground, trailing wherever she walked. She calmly stepped away from Ryoko, circling back around her as she pulled out the spears and turned them back into desks.

"Not even gonna bother, huh? All high and mighty and shit. Fuck you!" Ryoko yelled, and jumped high. In midair, her arms started to warp into tentacles, striking Yuki from all directions. Her left arm clawed through Yuki's abdomen, and the other arm cleaved through her chest. Yuki's blood splattered all over their clean white uniforms.

"It's over," Yuki said quietly, bleeding from her mouth.

"What's over? Your miserable fucking three years of existence?" Ryoko replied, pulling her arms away.

"Nah," Yuki said nonchalantly, and backhanded Ryoko hard in the face, making her fall to the ground. "Commencing data interface disconnection."

Instantly, everything in the classroom crystallized, then broke down, turning into pristine white sands.

"Amazing… You truly are outstanding," Ryoko said, watching the sand drift away in the wind around her.

"It took me a while to penetrate your program," Yuki said, standing still.

"You've rigged the whole place, haven't you? You really do have experience with attacking data. Oh well. I guess I've lost, then," Ryoko said, before gradually turning into dust. "This is a win for you, I suppose. And I guess Spoony and Haruhi and all your other friends will be just fine for now. But don't take this as some sort of victory for your faction overall. Just for now, Yuki."

"Mm-hm."

"Just for now," Ryoko whispered, before turning almost completely into sand. Her mouth was the last thing to dematerialize, and as it faded away, she murmured a final word. "Seeya."

Yuki looked up with wide eyes.

"Removing impure substances. Commencing restoration of location."

The familiar 1-5 classroom faded back into existence, reconstructed from the crystalline sands. The blackboard, the desk, the chairs, and the walls all grew back the exact way they were before. Yuki's wounds disappeared, and the blood cleared up from the floor. The windows grew back, and the sunset faded back into view.

Two figures materialized in front of the blackboard.

"Miss Kurosawa," one of them said.

"Mister Lovhaug," Yuki replied. He materialized fully with his partner and steadily approached her.

"Congratulations, dear!" he said cheerfully, clapping his chubby hands quietly. "You're one step closer to winning."

"Simply eliminating all opposition doesn't guarantee a win," Yuki said, brushing off her shoulders.

"That's about right," his partner said poshly. "A more proper bond must be established before a Warper-Interface duo can reach their full potential. You should know that well yourself, Lewis."

"Yes, of course, Stu," Lewis said, fanning himself. "Ah, but you don't have to be like us with Haruhi, Yuki, if you don't want to," he added, flashing the ring on his left hand.

"I can't make decisions of yours and Dr. Ashen's nature right now," Yuki said, waving off the two men and starting to walk away. She walked over to Spoony, trembling slightly from her injuries, and knelt in front of him.

"Who's that?" Lewis asked, hustling over to Spoony.

"This man is chosen by Haruhi," Yuki began, pulling up her sleeves. "He has no affiliation with any faction of the IDE, nor the time travelers or the espers of this Earth." She leaned over Spoony's unconscious body, putting her hand lightly against his neck, then turned to the two men. "By all accounts, he's an ordinary human."

"Haruhi's attached to him?" Lewis asked, and put his finger to his mouth in contemplation. "A human first..."

"Is she that much of an anomaly?" Stuart remarked, throwing his arm around his husband's shoulder. "I wouldn't be too concerned about it, as long as he lives."

"Help me with him, then, Doctor, so that he does live," Yuki said, and she beckoned him over while leaving Lewis behind. "Here," she said, and pointed to a spot on the back of Spoony's neck.

Lewis paced the room, looking down at the floor. His foot hit Ryoko's glasses, abandoned on the floor after the fight. He knelt to pick them up, turned them in his hands, and walked them over to the others.

"Yuki."

"Yes?" Yuki said, turning to Lovhaug. He smiled faintly, then handed the glasses to her.

"To the winner goes the spoils," he said. Yuki hesitated with the glasses in her hands, then put them on.

Spoony hazily woke up and sat up slowly, gazing around the room. He stared at the two strangers gathered around Yuki.

"Am I dead?" he asked, his sunken eyes red with exhaustion.

"Spoony," Yuki said, brushing off his jacket. "Spoony, you're alive."

He heaved breaths, and his eyes wandered to the others. "...then who the hell are these people?"

Lewis and Stuart stood in silence. Lewis raised his hand hesitantly, then lowered it and took a deep breath.

"You...you're part of something much bigger than yourself now," he said, and walked away, taking Stuart's hand and slowly dematerializing into the distance.

Yuki turned back to Spoony and pulled him up. Spoony's eyes darted around, and he turned tense, his breaths shortening slightly as he tried to absorb his surroundings. Yuki rested her hands on Spoony's shoulders. They stood still as she tried to ease him.

The door opened.

"Stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff that I forgooot...I forgot stuff that I forgot..."

Taniguchi came into the room singing some stupid tune, barely even looking to see who was already there. His eye caught Yuki and Spoony, and he halted suddenly, like the power cut out. He stood dumbfounded with his mouth hanging open like an idiot.

"Uh...I'm gonna go."

He skittered out of the room, and Yuki turned back to Spoony.

"Interesting," she said.

"What do we do now?" Spoony said.

"My specialty is data manipulation. Irafune will be gone from this world and they'll all be none the wiser," she said. "I don't know if even Haruhi will be able to know."

Spoony stood silently in thought, then stepped back from Yuki.

"If you hadn't been there, I would have died. I owe everything to you," he said. "But are you trying to use this to tell me you really are an alien?"

Yuki smiled gently like a parent calmly amused by something stupid their kid said.

"I wanted to be a sidekick, right? I wanted to be the guy who would just say something encouraging to the main character, who was the weird one, and I wanted to be normal. But I didn't expect to be targeted by my own classmates!"

"Irafune is from a rebel faction of the IDE. They don't care who lives and dies as long as they can accomplish their goals," Yuki said, and raised her hand to her mouth. "But I understand your plight. It seems like you didn't expect a thing."

"I didn't. Not at all," Spoony said. He looked to the sunset, then nudged Yuki. "Let's go back to the clubroom, okay? We need to go home."

Yuki calmly took Spoony's shoulder and walked out of the room with him.

The next day, Irafune Ryoko was gone, and no one even noticed.


	6. The Melancholy of Haruhi Insano (Chapter 6)

Like the day before, Spoony found another letter inside his shoe locker. He hesitantly looked over it, flipping it over in his hands. It was in a ritzy envelope, the kind you would find for free in a magazine. On it was a very distinct name -- it wasn't anonymous like the last letter.

"Asahina Mikara," it said. He opened up the envelope and pulled out the letter. On a piece of cute patterned paper, Mikara had written:

"Please see me in the clubroom during lunch. I'll be waiting for you.

Mikara-chan"

He could barely resist. Having almost died the day before, he felt like he ought to be hesitant, but oddly, he wasn't. He proceeded through his day normally, but as Hazuki, Saki, and Kairi bugged him to eat lunch with them, he apologized as fast as he could and made a swift beeline to the clubroom.

When he made it there, he knocked on the door.

"Please come in," Mikara said from the other side, and he walked in.

But he didn't see Mikara. Instead, there was a beautiful woman standing at the window, looking out so that he couldn't see her face. She was dressed in a white blouse, a brown vest, and well-fitting blue jeans, as well as a familiar brown hat and the school visitor slippers.

"Hello, ma'am?" Spoony said. The lady turned around and walked to him.

"It's been a while, Spoony," she said, and faintly smiled. She looked a lot like Mikara, except slightly different, and Spoony was convinced it wasn't her.

“So, uh...are you Asahina’s sister or something? Where is she? Is she late?” he said, rubbing his hands together.

“Pfft,” Mikara started, and bent over. “You’re dumb, Spoony. I _am_ Mikara.”

“What?!”

“There’s your concrete proof, buddy. I came here to tell you something else, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Please remember the story of Snow White.”

“Uh...okay? Why?”

“Classified information.”

“Damn! You really are Mikara.”

“You’ll find out eventually, though. Don’t worry.”

“How long will I have to wait to know things? How old are you now, anyway, Asahina?”

“Now, that’s highly classified information, dear,” she cooed. She winked at him and started to strut to the door. “See you later, Spoony,” she added, and in a flash of light, she was gone.

“Man, she really developed,” Spoony mumbled to himself. The door clattered open.

“Spoony, what are you doing here?” Haruhi said. “Aren’t you supposed to be with those second-year nerds?”

“Nah, I left something in here,” he said, and he dashed for a DVD next to him. “Yuki wanted me to take this movie home and watch it myself.”

“She wanted you to take Alone in The Dark home and watch it yourself?”

“Yeah! Yeah, she did, I guess, I don’t get her.”

“Whatever,” Haruhi said. “Can you come over to my house tonight? There’s some really important stuff I need to tell you today, and I don’t wanna do it at school, ‘cuz someone might be eavesdropping for gossip or something.”

“Uh, sure, okay,” Spoony replied.

“You better do it. Brigade member’s honor.”

On his (dubious) honor as an SOS Brigade member, Spoony walked with Haruhi to her house after school. With her hand on his back, she ushered him into a quiet little single-floor house. They took off their shoes, and she gingerly put them onto a rack by the door.

“You like to keep everything tidy here, don’t you?” he asked.

“Only the things I need to let people see,” she said. “If my sister’s not gonna do it, then I better.”

“Your sister?”

“Her sister,” Koharu said, appearing from the hall. “It’s nice to finally meet you, ‘Spoony’.”

“Uh, nice to meet you too?” he said, feebly offering his hand to shake.

“I’ve heard so much about you, prettyboy. ‘Ooh, he’s got sparkly green eyes!’ ‘Ooooh, he’s so cool, sis!’ ‘He’s a jerk, but he’s so interesting!’ It’s ridiculous.”

“Koharu, I swear to Tesla I did not say anything like that!”

“You totally meant it, though. Anyway, she wanted to take you to her secret laboratory, so I’ll go make some dinner and let you do that. Make sure you wear ‘protection’ against those ‘hazardous chemicals’ you’ll be experimenting with,” Koharu said, and she sauntered out of the hallway and into the kitchen. Haruhi frowned and grabbed Spoony’s wrist, pulling him down the hall and shoving her bedroom door open, hustling him in and shutting the door hard behind them.

“I don’t understand how she doesn’t get ‘I don’t care for sex’,” Haruhi muttered. “Anyway, come sit on the bed,” she said, and she guided Spoony to sit there. He set his bag next to his feet, and she threw her bag onto the bed behind them.

The room had been hastily neatened up. The tall stacks of notebooks by the bed were only mildly straightened, and little pieces of debris still littered the floor. A mess of beakers, tubes, and flasks sat on a table on the side, and underneath the table sat a running mini-fridge. On the opposite side of the room sat a clean writing desk and a tall bookcase of scientific reference works.

“Seems like you got a pretty wide range of stuff here. What field of science do you even wanna do, anyway?” Spoony said, gently rocking his feet back and forth.

“Really, I don’t care, as long as it’s not applied in an ordinary way. I want to do things nobody else would do as confidently as I wanna, like cloning or time travel and stuff.”

“I’m guessing that’s what your notebooks are for?”

“Well, yeah. Although they’re more useful for the theoreticals and plotting out how certain elements fit together. Sometimes I just like to be hands on,” she replied, and she pulled open the mini-fridge door. “Look at this thing,” she said. She held up a jar full of amniotic fluid, with a little green thing floating in it. It had visible eyeballs and tiny tentacles.

“What the fuck?”

“I know, dude,” she replied, putting it back into the fridge. “It’s just a thing now, I haven’t gotten to a point where it can do much other than absorb nutrients. But I’ll get there.”

“You sure you wanna get there?”

“I’m using some of my own biological material in that project, of course I wanna get there,” she said, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow. “I don’t wanna have kids, so it’ll be the closest thing to one I’ll ever make.”

“Is that how you got green slime all over --”

“Yes, but don’t ask any more questions, because if I explained it to you, it would be the grossest thing in the world.”

“You--”

“The start of puberty is hard for everyone,” she said, waving her hand in dismissal. “Speaking of which, I’ve been wanting to be a mad scientist since middle school. Before then, I just wanted to meet aliens and time travelers and other supernatural stuff, but then I realized that if we wanted to get to the point where aliens would wanna communicate with us, we would have to advance scientifically. If we wanted to be time-travelers, we would have to invent time travel. If we wanted to prove the existence of other supernatural forces we would have to find completely accurate ways to detect them. So I wanna be one of those people who gets us there.”

“What about ruling the world and stuff?”

“Who tells people they’re a mad scientist, but doesn’t want to rule the world? You gotta meet people’s expectations, Spoony. Besides, everybody wants to rule the world.”

“Fair enough,” he said. He twiddled his thumbs as Haruhi gingerly stepped over to the pile of notebooks and plucked one off the top.

“You want me to read something to you? I’m working on it and I need you to tell me if it makes sense so far.”

“Sure, no prob.”

“Okay,” she said, and she pensively flipped to a page in the middle. “Time is made up of a series of single instances called ‘time planes.’ Each plane is a single, rigid instance of the universe in sequential order. In other words, it doesn’t flow like a river, it’s more like the pages of a flipbook. Travelling through time is like drawing a new figure onto one page of the flipbook -- there’s no kind of continuity or anything between the different planes.”

Spoony went silent. Here Haruhi was, parroting to him the same theory of time travel Mikara had told him mere days before. She probably didn’t even know Mikara’s people relied on that theory to even operate, or that she was the reason Mikara was even here. But telling her any of that evaded him when she spoke up.

“...is it not plausible?”

“Uh, no, it is, actually. Pretty plausible, I could believe it myself. Maybe you could be right about everything.”

“Were you listening?”

“‘Course I was!”

“Dinner’s ready!” Koharu called, and Haruhi tossed the book onto the bed and tugged Spoony’s sleeve, making him follow her back into the hall and to the living room.

On a coffee table in front of the TV, Koharu laid out three plates of BLTs with eggs. The sofa sat close to the table, so much so that Spoony nearly tripped over himself trying to get down. Koharu purposefully sat between Spoony and Haruhi on the crowded, threadbare sofa and spread her legs out to cramp them further.. She picked up her plate and started eating.

“It’s nice you made us dinner,” Haruhi said between bites of eggs.

“I can only make like, three things,” Koharu replied, taking a swig of soda.

“It’s good, though,” Spoony said.

“Oh, you like my cooking, huh?” Koharu said, looking at Spoony with a suspicious smile. “You wanna eat this all the time, prettyboy?”

“Dream on, sis, you’re never gonna make us eat this all the time. All you wanna get is fast food,” Haruhi said, rolling her eyes.

“You callin’ me fat?” Koharu said, pointing her fork at Haruhi.

“No, I’m calling you a cheap-ass!” Haruhi retorted, and Koharu’s face twisted into an evil grin. She put her plate down, wrestled Haruhi’s out of her hands, and tackled her sister, nearly knocking Spoony’s can of soda out of his hand.

“Hey, come on!” he said, holding his plate over the table. “Watch it, man, there’s a beverage here!”

Koharu’s hands scrambled viciously across Haruhi’s sides, making her roll around in tearfully infectious laughter. Koharu paused for a moment to breathe, and Haruhi grabbed her and picked her up, throwing her up onto her shoulder. Spoony watched, nearly pissing himself with the fear of getting someone else’s food and drink all over the floor in their house. Haruhi carried Koharu behind the couch, into a more open space, and dumped her on the floor. Koharu retaliated by getting up and grabbing a cushion from the couch, then whacking her sister in the head with it. Haruhi burst into real laughter and she grabbed a cushion herself, and the two smacked each other repeatedly with the pillows until they could barely move anymore. Haruhi, bowled over, leaned down in exhaustion. Koharu stumbled around and turned to Spoony, only just noticing he was there.

“Aw. Good times, huh?” Haruhi sighed.

“I guess,” Spoony said, picking up his empty plate.  
  
“Well, you ought to go home,” Koharu said, smacking her hands together. “Before it’s too late.”

“Yeah,” Spoony replied, and he walked the plate to the empty sink in the kitchen. He and Haruhi walked into her bedroom. He picked up his bag and started to walk out, but Haruhi stopped him in front of the bookcase.

“Hold on,” she said, and she pulled a slender paperback from the case. “Take this and read it sometime,” she said. “Be gentle, this is my childhood.”

Spoony slowly took the book from her hand. The navy blue cover was worn slightly, and it had white text emblazoned on it. An inset photograph of an English man in a wheelchair sat in the bottom right corner.

“It’s A Brief History of Time. I don’t have a Japanese copy,” Haruhi said quietly. “You can read English, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Spoony said. “I paid attention in foreign language class, no thanks to you.”

“Well, excuse me, princess,” she said, and she gave him a pat on the back. “Let’s take you home, Spoony.”

As they walked down the road to Spoony's house, Haruhi suddenly piped up while they were waiting to cross an intersection.

"You ever think you're just a little tiny ant in this great big world?"

"Yeah," Spoony replied.

"I have, too. I'll never forget it, either," she said, and they started to walk again.

"Yeah?"

"When I was in sixth grade, I went with Koharu to a baseball game, right? I didn't really care for baseball, but I was totally fixated on how huge the crowd was. There were people everywhere, and the audience across the stadium from me seemed like little grains of rice. In that moment I thought the whole nation had come here to watch the game. So I asked my sister how many people were there right now, and she said that since the stadium was full, there'd be about fifty thousand people.

"After the game, the traffic was congested with people. When we finally got home, I took a calculator and remembered that the population of Japan was about a hundred million. When I divided a hundred million by fifty thousand, I got two thousand. I remember it exactly as it happened. I was totally stunned by it, too. One out of every two thousand people went to the game -- not one out of every one, not one out of every five, but one out of every two thousand. All those tiny people packed into the stadium were only a two-thousandth of the population, including me.

"Before that, I thought I was special, and that the people in my class were the most interesting people around. But after that incident, the color started draining out of my life. I felt like I was becoming just another little ant in the anthill. The things I did were the monotonous things that everybody did. There were interesting things in the world, so why weren't they happening to me? So from then on, I decided to be an interesting person, and to find people who were like me."

She looked down and kicked the rocks out of her way, as if she regretted telling everything to him.

"It's okay," Spoony said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

The two of them made it to Spoony's house, and they parted with their own farewells.

Spoony opened the door to his house, shut it behind him, and walked into the living room. He took his blazer off, hung it on the rack, and pulled off his tie. He noticed a strange pair of little leather shoes by the door, too small for his sister or anyone she knew. He stared at the shoes with a slight glare, then headed towards the kitchen.

“Just make sure he’s back by 10, Miss Eiganou. My little Spoony one doesn’t take well to going to bed too late.”

“Sis, the hell is going on here?” Spoony replied, standing in the entryway to the kitchen. Coco and his own sister were standing in the middle of the kitchen talking about god-knows-what.

“You’re finally here,” Coco said, and she walked over to Spoony, took his arm, and tugged at him. “We’re going out tonight.”

“Aww, how romantic,” Spoony’s sister said, cradling her head in her palms. She flipped her wiry black hair. “I remember when I was your age, and --”

“She’s a kid,” he grumbled, pulling his arm from Coco’s grasp. “This is not a date. And I just came back, can a man take a rest?”

“You can take a rest in the car, mate,” Coco said. “The rips in the leather won’t be much of a burden on you.”

“The rips in the leather? What are you taking me into, a Datsun?”

“Let’s go.” Coco yanked on him, pulling him out of the kitchen and back into the living room. She put on her shoes and strutted out of the house, with him trailing behind.

“You’re just gonna take me somewhere?”

“Why didn’t you take off your shoes when you got into the house?” she asked, stepping out onto the sidewalk. She stopped Spoony there and looked to him.

“...I forgot, because I don’t just ignore little girls’ shoes suddenly showing up by my door.”

“See, I remembered.”

“Apparently you don’t remember the question I just asked you a minute ago.”

“Be patient. I’m just gonna keep my promise from yesterday. I’ll explain in the car.”

A mid-70’s Datsun Bluebird squeaked to a stop slightly ahead of Spoony’s house. She tugged him off the sidewalk and to the back doors of the car, letting him into the back seat on the right. She opened the back left door and flung herself in, shutting the door firmly.

“C’mon, lady, treat me bloody car better!” Stuart whimpered from the driver’s seat, throwing out his hand in protest.

“You can just fix it if I screwed it up,” she replied, and crossed her leg. “It’s had a good run, anyway.”

“Had a good run? This is like, the only British Datsun I’ve seen here, Coco, it’s kind of a big deal. And it’s Stuart’s car, he loves this thing almost as much as he loves me,” Lovhaug retorted from the passenger’s seat.

“Then don’t drive it,” she replied, giggling under her breath. “You stick out like a sore thumb anyway. This is a classic car and it’s bright bloody yellow, Lewis. What’s gonna happen when you’re old and the car’s even older?”

“The brakes are kind of crappy,” Spoony said, prompting silence from the other passengers as the engine rumbled loudly.

“The brakes were crappy when it was new,” Stuart mumbled, and he pulled off. The old car rumbled down the street as Spoony adjusted himself on the seat.

“There’s no rips in this leather,” Spoony said quietly, turning to Coco with a skeptical look. “You said the leather was ripped.”

“It was this morning,” Stuart replied. “Not anymore.”

“Uh--”

“Spoony,” Coco began. “Lewis Lovhaug, Stuart Ashen,” she added, pointing to the left and the right. “They’re agents of the IDE. The two of them are representatives of Yuki’s faction in the competition for partnership with Haruhi. Many years before, they were the results of such a competition themselves. They’re of an extreme usefulness to the Organization, so I’m in charge of maintaining that partnership. I decided to bring them here today to demonstrate my powers to you. Lewis has similar powers to Haruhi, but he happens to have a much firmer control on them than she does. Even if Lewis happens to lose his control, Stuart is a highly powerful Interface with residual control of reality warping. Therefore, instead of waiting for Haruhi to create her own Closed Space, I’ve chosen to utilize my connections for your information.”

“Well, that’s lovely,” Spoony said. “Where the hell are we going?”

“A mansion on the far west side of town that belongs to the Organization for the Advancement of Gifted Girls,” Stuart replied.

“He’s done his research,” Coco said with a wink.

“Speaking of the Organization, do you really think Haruhi’s God?” Spoony asked. “If Lewis has the same powers as her, she’s not really the one God, is she?”

“Perhaps Stuart would have something to say,” Coco suggested, and she sat back with a smile.

“Consider the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics,” Stuart started, casually speaking without unlocking his gaze from the road. “Reality is like a tree, not a straight line, where whenever some sort of action happens, from a massive catastrophe to a single breath, it splits off into a separate reality. This dimension that we are currently in is merely a branch off the main line of history, and there are many other branches on the tree. Lewis and I are from other branches than this one. A dimension can only maintain one Warper, which supports the Organization’s hypothesis of Haruhi being an equivalent to ‘God’ or any other monotheistic deity.”

“So Lewis being here means he left his dimension behind?”

“As opposed to making a new one, of course,” Lewis replied. “I can only be in charge of one dimension at a time. So if Haruhi leaves your dimension and makes a new one, the old one might be destroyed.”

“Might be? Don’t you know? Isn’t there some reality where somebody did do that?”

“It doesn’t happen very often. We can’t really find dimensions that have been destroyed, obviously.”

“I don’t want to die…” Spoony whispered.

“Don’t worry about it,” Coco said. “You’re not gonna, no matter what.”

“How do you know that?” he replied.

“Because she chose you, Spoony,” Lewis said. “You might not know, but she’s made rather big changes in her life because of you. Her abilities are off the charts right now. You’re the most important person she’s ever known.”

Spoony went silent. The car rumbled quietly as Stuart continued driving. Lewis batted his lashes, turned around in his seat and looked straight into Spoony’s eyes.

“In the dimension I came from, you’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had,” he said.

“...am I normal there?” Spoony mumbled.

“Well, compared to your situation here…”

“Someday I want to see myself living an ordinary life,” Spoony said, cutting Lewis off. He gulped and started to smile. “Even if I can’t live it myself, I want to see myself with a life I’m happy living. ”

Lewis faltered and bit his lip, then nodded gently. “Yeah.”

The car stopped in the driveway of a massive Western-style mansion, cleanly painted in a stark red and white. A cast stone statue of a beautiful young Greek goddess stood in the center of a fountain at the entrance. The four jumped out of the car, moving quickly out of the driveway.

“Is this the place you were taking us? Seems a little too ritzy for you guys,” Spoony said, putting his hands on his hips in skepticism.

“This is just my boarding house, I don’t need anything special,” Coco said, turning around and backing up into the fountain. “So let’s introduce you to somebody.” She swung out her arms and stood directly in front of the statue. “I summon the great goddess, Hibi!”

“Jesus, Coco,” another girl said, walking out from behind the statue. “You don’t have to do that,” she added, and gave her a light-hearted bump in the side.

“Miss Hibi Kumaken,” Stuart said, showing Spoony to her. “An esper.”

Hibi took off her glasses and looked into Spoony’s eyes without saying a word to him. She took a deep breath, then put the glasses back on. “Your nickname is Spoony, and you’d rather be called that than your real name, despite the fact you got that nickname from an embarrassing childhood incident where your aunt caught you playing house with a bunch of girls from across the street. Your aunt chose an English word for that nickname, since she was a native speaker of English, as was your --”

“Okay, okay, I get it, that’s your power thing,” Spoony said, backing up out of fear.

“You’re very sensitive about that, of course. Your neuroses are based around your need to feel normal, and your heritage in this very homogeneous country highly violates that need. But we’re all like that, aren’t we?”

Coco shrugged, and Spoony folded his arms and sneered. “It’s none of your business,” he retorted. “You don’t even know if that’s true or not. You could have just made a whole bunch of assumptions.”

“I heard it through the grapevine,” Hibi said. “Anyway, are you all ready?”

“Ready for what? My therapy session?” Spoony said. Coco grabbed his right hand and took Hibi’s left, Lewis took Spoony’s left hand, and the five of them formed a circle in front of the statue.

“Close your eyes,” Coco whispered to Spoony.

When he opened his eyes, the world was grey.

The mansion was still present, of course, and so were the other people, but everything else seemed distant, as if the world had been emptied out.

“You are now in a Closed Space,” Lewis said, breaking hands with Spoony. “It’s a gap in a cross-dimensional fault line that I’ve created specifically for this demonstration.”

“Haruhi’s powers are like this,” Coco said, putting her hands on her hips. “Except she can’t summon them at will, or modify them consciously. Most of the time, she creates them when she’s frustrated or highly conflicted, or whatever she feels.”

“A Closed Space is like the inside of a bowl put upside-down onto a table,” Lewis said, trying to make a model with his hands. “It’s like a little bubble on the surface of a dimension.”

“One of the common powers of the espers is to be able to enter Closed Spaces without the need for permission from a Warper,” Coco said, folding her arms idly. “We have to defeat any monsters that are inside before they start to have effects on the real world.”

“Monsters?” Spoony said, looking around. He stood still, staring off into another direction, and then whipped around.

A massive giant made of blue energy, standing about 30 stories tall, was directly behind him. It stood still, as did Lewis, and as he started to walk, the giant moved too. His eyes were shut hard, and he walked over, moving the giant over to the mansion. He ran his hand around the air, and the giant ran its hand over the mansion. He pulled out his fist, and the giant slammed it into the roof of the mansion, crushing it into pieces.

“What the hell?” Spoony said.

“Under normal parameters, these giants can only be stopped by a set of espers,” Coco said to Spoony. She turned back to the giant and grabbed Hibi’s hand. “Let’s get it.”

They leapt into the air, and their bodies turned into red balls of energy. The two spheres sped towards the giant, swung around the arms of the giant, and in a red flash, its arms dropped off, crashing down to the ground. Bit by bit, they split the giant into pieces, killing it mercilessly. Spoony’s gaze turned fast to the others. Lewis writhed in stinging pain, and Stuart wrapped his arms tightly around his husband’s waist, pressing his head into Lewis’s back.

“Is he --” Spoony said.

“It’s okay,” Stuart whispered. He calmly pulled his hand up Lewis’s chest and put the other on the back of his neck. His hands glowed, and Lewis eased as the giant collapsed into tiny bits of glowing energy and disappeared. The two red spheres flew back onto the ground in front of them and steadily formed back into Hibi and Coco.

The sky began to crack apart, and the grey pieces of sky fell out and faded away. The illusion of the wrecked mansion began to fall apart, and the world turned normal again.

“The Closed Space is destroyed when all the giants die,” Coco said. “Remember that for later, in case Haruhi ever makes one herself. You may be our only hope.”

“I hope that doesn’t happen,” Spoony mumbled, and Coco put her hand on his back, guiding him to the car.

“And hopefully it never will. Keep an eye on her, will you?” she said, opening the door for him as the other two hopped in.

“Yeah, okay. Don’t worry about it,” Spoony said, getting into the car. She shut the door for him, and the car sped off.


	7. The Melancholy of Haruhi Insano (Chapter 7)

As the days passed before summer, the trip up the hill became more and more tiring. Spoony trudged up the hill, sweating through his shirt, pulling open his jacket, and unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt. He sluggishly pulled into the school and went to his shoe locker. He started taking off his shoes to change them when a heavy slap on the back arrested him from his sweaty haze.

"Don't fucking touch me!" he yelled before turning around to see who'd hit him.

"Hey, man," Taniguchi said, throwing up his hands in defeat. "You must be sweaty as hell, right? Sucks, doesn't it? I dyed my hair yesterday and I keep getting paranoid about all the sweat in there."

"Taniguchi," Spoony said, turning to him. "I'm a normal high schooler, aren't I?"

"What?" he replied, and laughed uneasily. "Define 'normal', dude. Normal high schoolers don't mack on Kurosawa in the middle of a classroom after school."

"Okay, but I didn't have to meet Kurosawa. I didn't have to meet Suzumiya. I didn't implicitly ask to be involved in all this weird bullshit. Now I just want to be left alone," Spoony said, and took a deep breath.

"Seriously, though, dude, how did you get a relationship with Kurosawa like that? She's pretty damn attractive to be hanging around you."

"Didn't you think Suzumiya was too attractive for me?"

"Suzumiya's a weirdo, though. C'mon, spit it out."

Spoony sighed, slouched, and put his hand on Taniguchi's shoulder. "So Kurosawa is suffering from Haruhi taking over her room, right? She was pretty upset about not being able to hold her club's activities in her own room. So she went to me to see if I could help her, and since I felt bad for her, we went to the classroom so we could talk about it where Haruhi couldn't find us. While we were talking about it, though, she started feeling weak from her anemia, so she had to grab my shoulders to not fall on the floor."

Taniguchi stood still, chewing on Spoony's story.

"Yeah, I don't believe you, Spoony. You were bright red, dude, I saw it. You were totally kissing or something, I know it."

Spoony's face twisted, and he glared at Taniguchi. "Taniguchi, do you have any supernatural powers?"

"Uh... Okay, I take that back. You've been kissing Suzumiya! Suzumiya got her cooties on you and now you're spitting out the same nonsense she does! Don't give me Suzumiya's cooties!" he replied, and he backed up slightly, mockingly throwing his hands in front of his face to protect himself.

Spoony lightly punched Taniguchi, and they both burst into laughter. "Seriously, if you're an esper or something, I'm the Secretary-General of the United Nations."

The heat grew heavier and heavier as the day wore on. Spoony, left behind in the room since he couldn’t take PE class, had to resort to taking off his blazer and rolling up his sleeves to avoid the heat swirling around inside. He looked around swiftly, then kneeled in his seat and bent over Haruhi’s desk. He turned over her notebook and started flipping through it, turning to the last filled pages.

Instead of any written explanations or equations, little stick figures were scrawled all over the page. Some of them sort-of resembled Mikara, and others sort-of resembled Yuki. They were dressed up in vague, simple representations of various outfits, like a Mothra costume or a witch outfit. Spoony’s face twisted into an amused smile. The bell rang for the end of the period, and soon enough a flurry of students came into class. Haruhi came in in her PE uniform with her normal uniform slung over her shoulder.

“Seriously, man, this heat is getting ridiculous -- what are you looking at?”

Spoony looked up slowly, his face flushed with sweat and fear.

“Are you looking at my notebook?”

“What do I look like I’m doing?” he mumbled, his eyes widening.

“You gotta spoil yourself?”

“I didn’t know there was anything to be spoiled --” Spoony got cut off by Haruhi crisply grabbing the notebook and slamming it shut. Her eyes were full of fire, and the light glared off her glasses so much it filled the lenses with white.

“Don’t tell _anyone else_. Now turn around and sit down,” she said, and lightly pushed Spoony away. He slumped into his chair awkwardly. “And now that you’ve seen them, you better stay out of the clubroom today so you don’t tell anybody,” she added. “You can have the day off.” Spoony sighed deeply and smiled a little.

That night, after eating dinner and taking a bath, Spoony polished off his English homework. He looked at his clock, saw that it was late, and went to go to bed. He shut off the light, put Kurosawa's classical tape into his stereo, turned it down to a soothing volume, and jumped into bed, creeping under the sheet. The music eased him into his restfulness, and he went to sleep wrapped in his comfy blankets. For a while, he was completely under the spell of sleep.

He felt a hard slap in the face.

"Spoony."

His alarm clock hadn't rung, nor was it yet the time his sister would come to wake him up.

"Wake up already!"

He did not want to wake up.

"Wake u~p! You hear me, Spoony?!"

Hands wrapped around his neck and shook him, banging his head on the hard floor.

...the hard floor?

Spoony shot up, confused, and looked around. Haruhi was kneeling beside him, looking just as confused as he was.

"Do you know where we are?" Haruhi said, perplexed.

"Of course I know where we are, we're at school. We're by the shoe lockers at the school entrance, right? And it's night, so the lights are off and the sky is..."

He looked up through the high windows of the school, and Haruhi looked up with him. There wasn't a night sky anymore. The black of night and the stars had been replaced by a wide grey horizon.

"It's grey," Haruhi said. She looked down at Spoony, then pulled him up. The sound of his feet hitting the floor broke the solid silence of the world.

"Closed Space," Spoony mouthed, not making a sound. Haruhi brushed off her coat, then walked around to meet Spoony's eyes. She looked from side to side, then timidly clasped her hands.

"I found myself here when I woke up," she began, in an unusually soft voice. "Then I found you. Why are we here? Why are we at school?"

Spoony ignored her, instead making his hands scramble over his own body, pinching the backs of his hands and pulling out a hair from his arm. He reeled in pain, figuring out that he wasn't in a dream.

"Haruhi, are we alone?"

"I would think so."

"Isn't that Freudian?"

"Whatever. I was supposed to be asleep, I'm gonna be so screwed up in the morning."

"Have you seen Eiganou?"

"No...I haven't seen anybody besides you. Maybe we could find her if we left the school."

Haruhi walked over to the doors, then tried to push one open, but failed. The wooden door banged against the lock bolt.

"Come here," she said, beckoning Spoony. She ordered him to pull the other door as she pushed it inward, deliberately trying to break it. They strained, and eventually enough of the door snapped away to where Haruhi could squeeze out of the hole into the schoolyard. She ran out to the courtyard and tried to walk out on the sidewalk, but she stubbed her toe on an invisible wall just before it. She tried to shove her hand out, but it hit the wall painfully hard. She reeled back, hissing in agony, and shook her hand as she ran back to the stairs.

"There's no way out, is there?" Spoony asked, furrowing his brow.

"Let's try to use the phone to call someone," Haruhi said through gritted teeth. She shuffled through the eerie dark school to the switches and turned on the cold school lights. She eased a little, then pulled Spoony by the jacket through the halls into the staff room. When they approached the staff room door, Haruhi jiggled the lock, then started striking the window. Spoony picked up a fire extinguisher, smashed all the glass out of the window, and entered that way.

Haruhi picked up the phone and tried to call a number, but she heard nothing. She tried again and again, then threw the phone against the wall and tossed the staff keys into Spoony's hands. The air rippled like a desert mirage as she clenched her fists and walked back to Spoony.

"Doesn't work," she grunted, and she took Spoony's jacket in her hand, pulling him back into the hall. "Let's go to the classroom and look out the window."

They ascended the stairs silently, Haruhi keeping her grasp on Spoony.

"Dude, if you're scared, hold my arm or something, not my jacket."

"Shut up, Spoony."

She unlocked the 1-5 classroom, swung the door wide open, and walked into the class. She ran up to the window and clung to it, looking out into the distance.

"Spoony, look," she said.

Everything was pitch black, as if not a single light had been lit, but they could still see all the way out to shore on the horizon from the high vantage point. The view from the window was like a panorama of a silent apocalypse.

"What happened? What is this place?"

"It's like we disappeared, not everybody else," Spoony said.

"This...this is strange," Haruhi said, touching her shoulder in contemplation.

Since they didn't know where to go, they went back to the clubroom, which was exactly as they had left it the afternoon before. Spoony opened the door easily, and as they walked in, they both breathed a sigh of relief.

Spoony ran his hand through his hair as he sat next to the stereo. He tried to tune its radio, but he heard nothing but static. He shut it off, and after that, the room was dead silent. He chose to brew tea with some old tea leaves, and the croak of the kettle could be heard amongst the silence. Haruhi gazed at the grey world outside.

"Want some tea, Haruhi?"

"No."

Spoony poured a cup of tea for himself, and sat quietly as he drank it. His face twisted in disgust at its bitterness.

"I wish Asahina were here so I could have some halfway-decent tea," he said, folding his arms. He looked up to Haruhi, who stayed completely silent. "Dude, what the hell is going on? I don't get this, okay? Why are we here? And why the hell am I with you of all people?"

"Don't fucking ask me," Haruhi said, scowling at Spoony with scorn. "I'm gonna go and see if anyone's in the classrooms. You stay here."

She left the room immediately after saying that, not even letting Spoony get a word in. The sound of her angry footsteps echoed down the hall and eventually disappeared.

A little red ball appeared in front of Spoony. It shaped itself and formed a very vague translucent female humanoid figure.

"Spoony," Coco called.

"Eiganou, is that thing you?"

"I'd like to look a little more refined than this, but frankly this is a very strange occurrence. This Closed Space is so impenetrable I have to appear in this incomplete form to even get myself across the threshold." The red form flickered. "I'm gonna run out of power soon, as will just about everyone else in the Organization."

"So is it just me and Haruhi in here?"

"Yup. But don't be too happy about it. The creation of this kind of Closed Space is our own worst fear. It means that Suzumiya has grown tired of the normal world and has decided to make a new one. My superiors are in a real tizzy -- think about it, okay, Spoony?"

"Uhh..."

"There was that question I raised, right? If Haruhi makes a new world, what happens to ours? What happens to a world without a god? It could continue as normal, or it could end in the blink of an eye, and you'd never see us again."

"So what's really going on?"

"Well, you and Haruhi are gone from this world, and now you're in this one. Instead of a simple pocket on the fabric of our normal reality, the world you're in is a completely new creation. This is the real deal, instead of the mere tests she had before. I'd suspect that this world would be the one that meets all of Haruhi's expectations."

"Well, why am I here?"

"A world with you is the kind of world she wants, moron. You're the only person from the old world that she truly wants to be with right now. Everything else is up to her imagination. I bet you feel like one lucky bloke, Spoony. You'll be the next Adam to her Eve.”

"Shut the fuck up."

"Sorry, sorry, joking. But if she wants that to happen, it will. Judging by what she seems to want, though, the world around you will shortly develop into the exact kind of place Haruhi wants to live in, full of aliens and espers and time travellers. In a few moments you may well call the original reality a Closed Space and this new one the real world."

"I don't want to live in this gray-ass world alone with her," Spoony whimpered, and Coco started to flicker frequently, like an old film reel in a projector.

"I'm going to run out of power very soon," she said. "I must relay to you Miss Asahina and Miss Kurosawa's messages. Asahina says: 'I'm sorry, this is all my fault.' And Kurosawa says 'Remember to turn on the computer.'"

Her figure bowed its head in sorrow. Spoony leaned towards it and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry you all had to deal with this," he said.

"It was nice knowing you, Spoony, for the short time I did. Goodbye. Maybe forever."

Coco Eiganou faded out.

"Why'd Asahina apologize to me?" Spoony whispered to himself. He shook his head and rushed to the clubroom's computer. He turned it on and the hard drive beeped happily, but the OS boot screen didn't show up. All that was there was a black terminal screen with one little blinking line to show him it'd even worked. He cracked his knuckles to see if he could get the computer to boot, but instead, a message appeared.

YUKI.K > Can you read this?

Spoony sat slack-jawed for a moment before typing in a response.

'Yes, I can.'

YUKI.K > Good. We don't have much time. I haven't completely lost my connection to the new world as Eiganou has, but I will soon. Should that happen, this may be our final conversation.

'Help me, Kurosawa. What do I do?'

YUKI.K > Unfortunately, I don't know either. The world has just about returned to a completely normal state. The IDE is highly disappointed in the loss of another high-potential Warper. The ability to create massive amounts of data out of nothing and the ability to maintain stable temporary Closed Spaces are both highly necessary assets to the IDE. However, should you allow her to destroy the old world, we may not be able to keep her in an environment that can refine her powers.

'You want her to be exactly what you want her to be? Controlled by you?'

YUKI.K > As you have observed, the high-frequency Warpers affiliated with the various factions of the IDE are actually quite happy with their state. Their bonds with Humanoid Interfaces allow them not only to be emotionally stable, but highly capable in their various tasks. Allowing the IDE to observe and obtain Suzumiya is a very sound choice.

'Well, what the fuck do I do?'

YUKI.K > I told you, I don't know.

STUART.A > Wake her up.

'What?'

STUART.A > Wake her up. Make her aware of her own powers. Give her as many details as she wants. You don't have to tell her about us, nor the espers or time travelers, but you must tell her about her ability to manipulate data.

YUKI.K > That is a highly risky maneuver. However, seeing as Dr. Ashen is both my superior and maintains a successful bond with a Warper, I would trust his word over mine.

'How'd he get into this conversation?'

YUKI.K > He is my superior.

'You sure I should do that?'

YUKI.K > He is my superior, and he has given you an answer.

'Fine.'

Spoony leaned back in his chair, tea in his hand, and waited for another message.

YUKI.K > I am counting on you.

'Huh?'

YUKI.K > I am relying on you to restore the old world. Suzumiya is important to us all, an important treasure that has been stolen from not only the IDE, but the time travelers and the espers. I am also personally wishing for you to return.

'I'll try to do my best.'

The electricity in the computer seemed to flicker, and the words grew dimmer as they continued being displayed.

YUKI.K > Once you get back, I want to go with the library with you again.

The words were merely grey imprints on the screen by the time the last message showed up:

STUART.A > sleeping beauty

The computer shut off, then turned back on again, and it booted to the normal OS screen. Spoony sighed deeply and turned to the window.

A blue light shone from the window. A giant glowed outside, so close to the windows that it was more like a big blue wall. Haruhi rushed into the clubroom and pulled Spoony up.

"Spoony! Look! There's something over there!"

She pulled him to the window, then pointed out of it.

"It's so huge! Is it a monster? Or an alien? I wanna get a better look!" she said, her eyes glittering with passion. "It could be some ancient superweapon awakened from its slumber! It's so cool!"

The blue giant turned around. Spoony sprung up, grabbed Haruhi's hand, and went flying out the clubroom and down the hallway.

"Spoony? What are you doing?"

"That thing's gonna smash through the buildings. We have to make it to a safe place."

"But I wanna see it!"

"You'll see it when we're out in the courtyard!"

As they ran down the hallway, a massive tremor shook the entire building. Spoony flung himself onto Haruhi, shielding her from the shockwaves. A hard, heavy object slammed into the ground outside, and Spoony resumed pulling Haruhi back down the stairs. Their palms became sweaty, and Haruhi's heat could be felt against Spoony's hotter skin.

"It's going after the school building, not this one," Spoony said, his breaths growing thin.

"Then why are you worried?"

"When the school building is gone, the club building goes next, idiot."

"Rude," Haruhi said, and as they pulled out of the school building, the giant's arms smashed into it hard, crumbling the concrete of the top floors like it was made out of nothing. She sighed harshly, then smiled confidently again, following Spoony faithfully through the courtyard and into the track field. They stopped, and Spoony heaved breaths as he bent over with fatigue. Haruhi, however, was smiling like a madman as she looked at the giant. It slammed into the school building, destroying it completely, and she suddenly started to ease back into rationality as Spoony eased back into full consciousness.

"Do you think it's gonna attack us?" she said.

"I dunno, maybe."

Spoony started to think as Haruhi watched the giant's rampage. If those giants were allowed to continue destroying the world, then eventually the old world would be completely gone in favor of the new one. But what would be in the new world? Would his friends, or even the Asahina and Kurosawa he knows, be there? Or would it be some sort of overblown fulfilled wish, where everyone is an alien, an esper, or a time traveller, and the giants walk around freely?

He shook off his fear and stepped up to Haruhi.

"This is all very strange, Spoony, with the school and the giant --"

"Don't act surprised. You did this."

Haruhi turned to him, clearly perplexed, and folded her arms.

"I did nothing. I just woke up here."

"No. You did this. The entire reason we're even here is because you decided making a new world exactly the way you like it was better than living in the old world."

"...what?"

"You have the ability to manipulate the parameters of our reality. You warp it subconsciously to whatever you want it to be. And if you ever get tired of the reality you're in, you wipe it out and make a new one."

"Warping it to whatever I want?"

"Yeah. Like how the school suddenly started allowing different jackets so you could wear your labcoat to school, or glasses as head accessories so you could wear your goggles. Those are little changes you made in our reality."

"...really?"

Haruhi's eyes were wide as she stared at Spoony in amazement. The giant stopped its rampage and stood in the exact same position she was in. Spoony took her shoulders in his hands and answered her.

"Really. So if you just made a whole new reality, exactly the way you want it, would anything be really interesting anymore? If everyone were aliens or espers or time travellers, you'd eventually get sick of them and want to see something else. But you don't know everything that was in the old world. You might have everything you've ever dreamed of there, and you'd just have to look for it. Wouldn't you rather do that than to have everything come easy to you?"

Haruhi folded her arms and looked down in contemplation, and the giant matched her moves.

"So am I special, then? Like, really special, like the kind of special I want to be, not just the kind of special that I say I am? Are there things like that in our reality?" she said, tracing on the ground with her foot.

"Yeah. You are special. And as long as you try, you will find the supernatural."

"Why didn't I find it before?"

"You didn't let yourself find anything. Because you didn't know whether there really was anything supernatural around you, in your heart you believed the world was completely normal. But it's not, because you're in it. Now that you do know that, you might actually start to find something."

"...But --"

The giant started to grow bigger as Haruhi grew restless. Spoony's heart started to beat fast, and he started feeling dizzy. The air between them rippled again.

_"Please remember the story of Snow White."_

_STUART.A > sleeping beauty_

"Haruhi."

"What?"

"I don't know when I started feeling this way, but since then, I've been thinking that you'd look really good with your hair in a ponytail."

"The hell are you trying to --"

Spoony trembled, the air rippled around him, and in a moment, he grabbed Haruhi and kissed her passionately. Her eyes snapped open, and his clamped shut. The air rippled hard, battering Spoony with their shockwaves, and he collapsed, unconscious, onto the ground.

Padded.

He woke up in his room again, with his blankets wrapped around him. He had rolled over the bed onto the floor, and he laid on his side. His shoulder mildly throbbed, and his mind was in a haze.

He drifted to the window and looked outside. The stars twinkled outside, and the lights of the houses across the street greeted him. He blinked slowly, then stared again at the view.

Had he dreamt something as ridiculous as being in some surreal alternate reality, where he had to kiss a girl he wasn't even really that attracted to?

He shook his head, clutched it, and sat back down on the bed.

The kiss lingered on his lips.

Was this the original world? Or did Haruhi make a new one, and he just didn't know it yet?

It was two thirty in the morning, and his head was too blurry for him to contemplate it any further. He crawled back into bed and pulled his blankets over his head in defeat.

He couldn't sleep.

So, when he resumed his strenuous climb up the hill, he was totally exhausted. The sun refused to let up, and he felt like he was going to fry to death. Sleep curled around his head now, instead of earlier when he actually needed it. When he came to the school, he stopped to look at the school building. The students crawled into it like ants crawling into a little anthill, and soon enough, Spoony became one of those ants too.

He walked into the 1-5 classroom and sat down in front of Haruhi. He turned around, looking at her. She was looking out the window, so he could see the side of her head. A tiny ponytail was tied from her short hair, and it looked like a tiny fluffy puff in the back of her head.

"How's it been?" Spoony said.

"Oh, man, it was miserable! I had a terrible nightmare last night," she said, as if nothing even happened. "I couldn't sleep all night. I wanted to take a day off for medical leave, but then I'd be missing too many days."

"Hmm."

Spoony looked closer at Haruhi. Her face seemed restless and fairly grumpy, but he could barely see it. Her thick hair covered half of her face, and the light from the window washed out the tones of her skin.

"Hey, Haruhi?"

"What?" she said flatly.

"You look fantastic in that ponytail."


End file.
